Very interesting indeed, especially the Italian flag.

English wiki, "Italian flag"':

The flag of Italy (bandiera d'Italia, often referred to in Italian as il Tricolore) is a tricolour featuring three equally sized vertical pales of green, white, and red, with the green at the hoist side. Its current form has been in use since 19 June 1946 and was formally adopted on 1 January 1948.[1]

The first entity to use the Italian tricolour was the Cispadane Republic in 1797, which supplanted Milan after Napoleon's victorious army crossed Italy in 1796. The colours chosen by the Cispadane Republic were red and white, which were the colours of the recently conquered flag of Milan; and green, which was the colour of the uniform of the Milanese civic guard. During this time, many small French-proxy republics of Jacobin inspiration supplanted the ancient absolute Italian states and almost all, with variants of colour, used flags characterised by three bands of equal size, clearly inspired by the French model of 1790.

Some have attributed particular values to the colours, and a common interpretation is that the green represents the country's plains and the hills; white, the snow-capped Alps; and red, blood spilt in the Wars of Italian Independence. A more religious interpretation is that the green represents hope, the white represents faith, and the red represents charity; this references the three theological virtues.

Are there more examples for the use of the 3 "theological" colors for the 3 Magi?

Huck wrote: Are there more examples for the use of the 3 "theological" colors for the 3 Magi?

The earliest literary reference I have found so far is in a sermon by a Bishop in America c.1527 who likens the bringing of hope, faith and charity to the new world by the catholic church to the journeying of the three Magi - I am looking for earlier.

The earliest image with red, white and green I found is this:



Made at the Hohenburg Abbey, France, 1185 by Herrad of Landsberg (c.1130 - July 25, 1195) This illustration is from a reproduction by Christian Maurice Engelhardt, 1818.

There is also this old mosaic which shows them again (as above and with Medici) as three ages of man (youth, unbearded, middle age and old age white bearded - not sure about the colours - but the first has a greenish tunic, the second white, the third reddish (I can't be sure - I am more than a little colour blind).

SteveM wrote: The earliest image with red, white and green I found is this:

Made at the Hohenburg Abbey, France, 1185 by Herrad of Landsberg (c.1130 - July 25, 1195) This illustration is from a reproduction by Christian Maurice Engelhardt, 1818.

Lovely. It looked a little "new", so I wanted to see the original, if possible. Of course, even almighty Google can't turn back the clock this far -

"After having been preserved for centuries at the Hohenburg Abbey, the manuscript of Hortus Deliciarum passed into the municipal Library of Strasbourg about the time of the French Revolution. There the miniatures were copied in 1818 by Christian Moritz (or Maurice) Engelhardt; the text was copied and published by Straub and Keller, 1879-1899. Thus, although the original perished in the burning of the Library of Strasbourg during the siege of 1870 in the Franco-Prussian War, we can still form an estimate of the artistic and literary value of Herrad's work."

(from wikipedia's article on Herrad of Landsberg)

Here are the designs copied by Engelhardt -
http://web.archive.org/web/201107202136 ... IARUM.html

"Auro virtus perhibetur amantis: In myrrha bona spes; thure beata fides."

"Love is said to be the virtue of Gold: good hope of myrrh; faith of the blessed incense."

(Quoted in "The works of Thomas Adams" - no source is given and I haven't been able to find it.)

In 'On the Divine Liturgy' St. Germanus of Constantinople c.733 wrote:

“The Trisagion hymn is (sung) thus: there the angels say “Glory to God in the highest”; here, like the Magi, we bring gifts to Christ – faith, hope and love like gold, frankincense and myrrh...”

So the association of the gifts/Magi with the theological virtues does appear to be an old one, at least within the Greek Orthodox church: given the nature of medieval number symbolism and typological interpretation I imagine it was made fairly early in the Latin too.

The correspondences are given pretty succinctly by Jan Hus in 1412. This is what I can get of the text -

"... aurum, thus et mirra... per illum qui obtulit aurum, significatur caritas et per illum qui obtulit thus, spes et per illum, qui obtulit mirram, significatur fides."

So:
gold - love
frankincense - hope
myrrh - faith

So he disagrees with both of your texts (which disagree with each other too, if we take the Orthodox liturgical commentary as a one-for-one set of correspondences, which I don't think it is)

The text is Amadeo Molar, ed., Postilla Adumbrata, in the series Magistri Iohannis Hus Opera Omnia (Academiae Scientiarum Bohemoslovenicae, 1975), volume 13, p.540.

It's like pulling teeth to get anything out of the Google excerpts of this text - maybe you can do better.

Huck wrote: I've argued in the past for a relation between 3 theological virtues and the symbols Sun-Moon-Star and the 3 Magi...

There is a correlation between virtues and the sun, moon and stars in David of Augsburg's Profectus Religiosorum (12th century), a popular text of the middle ages:

"...quia per solem caritatis et lunam fidei et stellas aliarum virtutum corda fidelium illuminantur et vitam et ordinem et meritorum vigorem quasi per lucem et calorem siderum consquuntur."

"...by the sun of charity and the moon of faith and the stars of the other virtues the hearts, vitality, order and merit of the faithfull are illuminated as a consequence, as if it were, of the light and heat of the stars."*

quoted in "Franciscan Virtue: Spiritual Growth and the Virtues in Franciscan Literature" by Krijn Pansters.

It is reasonable I think to associate the Star trump as 'the star of hope'. On the other hand, the Magi, or a Magi, only appears on the star card (Rothschild, Minchiate) - in that respect it may be worth noting that in Dante's 'Paradiso' faith, hope and charity appear together in the 8th sphere of the fixed stars - also medieval mystery plays of the three kings/magi were often designated Stella - so if a conflation of the theological virtues with celestial trumps occured, it is possible they were conflated with the one trump (the Star) alone.

SteveM

* The association of the Sun with Charity/Love and Moon with Faith is fairly common among biblical commentators - Charity being compared to the Sun for example in relation to St. Paul's comment that of the three it is the greatest.

According to Swedenborg: "... now charity begins to appear, which in the Word is compared to day, and is called day; whereas faith which precedes, not being so joined with charity, is compared to night, and is called night, as in chap. i. verse 16, and elsewhere in the Word: faith is also called night in the Word from this, that it receives its light from charity, as the moon from the sun, wherefore also faith is compared to the moon, and is called the moon; and love or charity is compared to the sun, and is called the sun. Arcana Coelestia, Vol.1 p.44

The most important fact being lost here is the appropriation of Florence's Magi tradition by the Medici; the red ostrich feather on the hanged man is a relatively minor point and merely another data point pointing towards the CVI deck as Florentine/Medicean. Pivotal to identifying themsleves with the Magi was Cosimo’s undertaking of rebuilding San Marco, the church and convent where the feast of the Epiphany procession ended up as that is where the Christ child's manger was kept and where the Magi would place their gifts. The Epiphany procession was also a key time of the year in which Florence received foreign dignitaries. By eventually controlling this procession the Medici placed themselves in a position to feature themsleves in regard to the city’s relations with foreign powers

The festival of the Magi became closely associated with the Medici soon after Cosimo’s return [after 1434]. On the feast of the Epiphany the great man took part in the Magi’s journey, wearing a gold gown one year, walking in rich fur in another (R. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence, 1980: 423)

Plus:

The aristocratic ethos of this period of Florentine history had as one of its main cultural artefacts the spectacular processions of the Three Kings, which were staged by a Company of the Magi from 1390 until 1469. This festive period roughly corresponds to that in which foreign rulers were most welcome in the city, the reception of real kings as against play Magi beginning with the entry of Pope Martin V in 1419. Rab Hatfield’s view that “the sensibility of Florentine’s in matters of pageantry was changing” around 1470 may be compared to the reception of real princes: By the 1480s the city welcomed fewer foreign dignitaries, and put more and more effort into receiving the Medici.” (Trexler, 1980: 298)

See also Trexler’s The Journey of the Magi: Meanings in History of a Christian Story, where he refers to the Magi as a ‘legitimizing icon’ as appropriated by the Medici (1987: 90).

Back to the red ostrich feather on the CVI hanged man – I do believe its primary meaning is an antitype to Charity, particularly as associated with the Church/Papacy. But the red ostrich feather was previously featured in the Strozzi altarpiece of the magi that in fact served in many respects as a model for Gozzoli. To quote myself from a post from some months back:

In fact the Stozzi altarpiece was directly "quoted" in Gozzoli's famous painting of the Magi for Cosimo in his new palace in 1459: one of the kneeling Magi's feathered headress is exactly reproduced but with the Medici colors of green/red/white instead of the Strozzi red/gold: http://surprisedbytime.blogspot.com/201 ... three.html [original thread: search.php ]

Stozzi altarpiece magi headdress and that in the Medici chapel by Gozzoli:

Stozzi, as a one-time rival to the Medici for both control of the “legitimating icon” of the Magi and power in general, are explicitly mapped over here but in an almost bizarre merging of papal/church symbols (however secular as derived from Dante) with the Medici themselves. The Strozzi had placed their family colors on the Magi but there does not seem to be any evidence that the Medici ever used the theological colors (see the old Sacristy for instance) until 1449 on Piero’s birth tray for Lorenzo’s birth (ten years before the Gozzoli painting). The Medici in effect belatedly assumed the colors of the Magi as their own and so could defensively be said to not be painting over Strozzi’s family colors so much as restoring the magi’s true colors (which are now theirs as well). Strozzi was of course banished in 1434 with the Albizzi and, with guilt by association with the Albizzi party, essentially banned for life after Anghiari in 1440 (Palla Strozzi died in exile in Padua). The traitorous acts of 1440, the Albizzi aligning with Visconti to invade the Florentine contado, speaks specifically to proper - or in this case, improper - acts of foreign relations. Thus the red ostrich as tainted as traitorous (out of its theological colors context) in its use by an enemy of the Medici in a Magi setting.

In regard to the CVI, as an anti-Sixtus IV deck in my view, in 1478 the Papacy itself turned into a foreign power to be shunned when it viciously turned on it’s former ally of Florence, which previously had given refuge to Pope Eugene and the Council celebrated on the doors of St. Peter’s.

Phaeded

Re: red feather - such were also a mark of identity of the Ghibelins (or Guelphs - according to most sources in English):

wiki:
"The division between Guelphs and Ghibellines was especially important in Florence, although the two sides frequently rebelled against each other and took power in many of the other northern Italian cities as well. Essentially the two sides were now fighting either against German influence (in the case of the Guelphs), or against the temporal power of the Pope (in the case of the Ghibellines). In Florence and elsewhere the Guelphs usually included merchants and burghers, while the Ghibellines tended to be noblemen. They also adopted peculiar customs such as wearing a feather on a particular side of their hats, or cutting fruit a particular way, according to their affiliation."

The Ghibellins identified themselves with a red feather and/or flower on the left; the Guelphs a white feather and/or flower on the right (this was a practice outside of Florence too).*

"Distinguevansi i Guelfi dai Ghibellini per contrassegni a vedersi. Avevano i Guelfi , per esempio , la piuma bianca alla destra del capo e il fiore sul!' orecchia del luto stesso ; e i Ghibellini la piuma rossa e il fiore a sinistra."*

Dante writes of the Ghibellin traitor Bocca:

When someone yelled: "What the devil's eating you,
Bocca? Isn't it enough to chatter away
With your jaws? Do you have to bark too?"
"So!" I exclaimed. "Now there's no need for you to say
Anything, you wicked traitor! Now I can expose
The shameful truth about you to the light of day!"

SteveM

*Other sources say other way round, ghibellines wore white and guephs red.
ps: all that being said - isn't the CVI's hanged man's feather red and yellow? Yellow was the Judas colour (he was often depicted in yellow garments, and he was often depicted as red headed if memory serves me right, as well as clutching money bags or a purse).

Steve,
Guelph/Ghibelline factions were not the issue of the day when the ur-tarot would have been created in Florence, 1438-1440 (the last year, IMO); the Medici party and Albizzi faction were the combatants, disguised under the shifting appellations of popolani, magnates and oligarchs.

SteveM wrote: isn't the CVI's hanged man's feather red and yellow? Yellow was the Judas colour (he was often depicted in yellow garments, and he was often depicted as red headed if memory serves me right, as well as clutching money bags or a purse).

The yellow is only on the underneath of the feather, and seems to indicate highlighting. I think the predominant color shown is what is meant here: red; although red/gold-yellow would tie back to my references above to those colors of the Strozzi. Phaeded

I thought in colors ...

Well, thanks, that's all very fine material.

Phaeded wrote:The most important fact being lost here is the appropriation of Florence's Magi tradition by the Medici ....

In earlier times (years ago) there had been spoken already a lot about a context between "three Magi" and "Medici".

Perhaps one should gather this older material together with this new material (context between "three magi" and "three theological virtues") in an own thread (in "Decker's new book" it is easily overlooked).

Somehow it's also crucial for Dummett's suggestion "21 + 3" as a structure for the Cary-Yale.