Re: The World

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Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: Thanks very much for translating that poem, which is now invisible on the cosmograph. It's almost as if the Anonymous Discorso author had this in mind when he wrote:

"... et si faccia seco coheredi della vera sua gloria, et felicità del Cielo, et quindi accrescendo et con gli occhi et con l'intelletto ai Cieli, la Stella, la Luna, et il Sole, le sopranaturali fatture di Dio, cosi nello stellato, et fisso come nei mobili Pianeti il Mondo, de quali dalla propria di ciascuno intelligenza depende ch'è l'Angelo, il quale li governa, et muove in virtù del primo Motore, ch' è il grande et immortale Iddio...

"... making us co-heirs wih him of his true glory, and the happiness of Heaven. Therefore we rise with our eyes and intellects to the Heavens, the Star, the Moon and the Sun, the supernatural creatures of God, the World, so in the fixed stars as in the mobile Planets. Each of them depends on its own intelligence which is the Angel..."
Hello Ross,
I agree on the parallels between the Pisa poem and the Anonymous Discorso!

I would add to that line 8 of the poem refers to God as "Colui che non si muove ed è motore" (He who is a mover without moving), and in the passage you quoted the Anonymous also refers to God as "primo Motore".
I have made a superficial search for a common origin of these two passages, but I could not find any convincing candidate.

Re: The World

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I have recently found this illumination (many thanks to Michael Hurst for sending me a link to this scan, which is much better than what I first saw). The image was painted in France in 1475 ca.

God is represented as "the Soul of the World" ("Anima Mundi"). It is an illustration of Augustine's "The City of God" VII, 23 (Concerning the Earth, Which Varro Affirms to Be a Goddess, Because that Soul of the World Which He Thinks to Be God Pervades Also This Lowest Part of His Body, and Imparts to It a Divine Force).

As the fresco in Pisa, this illustration represents “El mondo (cioe Dio Padre)” - The world (i.e. God the Father): the World and God joint as a single image. Moreover, it includes the symbols of the four evangelists, like we see in the Sforza Castle World card and later Tarot de Marseille World cards.

Image

Re: The World

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That's a great image, thanks Marco and Michael.

I think, however, it is not Augustine's "God" who is depicted, though, but no more or less than what the legend says: "Anima Mundi". The legend is there so that readers won't be misled and think it is God (the Father - who would be older, dressed differently, crowned, etc.) or Jesus (who would be distinguished as well, perhaps by a halo or his wounds).

For what it's worth, I think that some of the early painted World cards are depicting an Anima Mundi as well (PMB is an exception, perhaps also the Cary-Yale). But the figures are purely decorative, a "human" addition to the card, and a figure's identity is not essential to the interpretation of the meaning of the card or its place in the sequence - it is just "The World" (the whole world).
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Re: The World

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Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:That's a great image, thanks Marco and Michael.

I think, however, it is not Augustine's "God" who is depicted, though, but no more or less than what the legend says: "Anima Mundi". The legend is there so that readers won't be misled and think it is God (the Father - who would be older, dressed differently, crowned, etc.) or Jesus (who would be distinguished as well, perhaps by a halo or his wounds).
Hello Ross,
I thought the image represented God on the basis of its similarity with the fresco from Pisa.

Image


But indeed in the illumination there is no halo, and Augustine rejects Varro's thesis that God is Anima Mundi.
In the same manuscript, God is represented with a halo, for instance in images 303 and 304.
So, I agree with your conclusion: this Anima Mundi is not God. Thank you for the correction!
For what it's worth, I think that some of the early painted World cards are depicting an Anima Mundi as well (PMB is an exception, perhaps also the Cary-Yale). But the figures are purely decorative, a "human" addition to the card, and a figure's identity is not essential to the interpretation of the meaning of the card or its place in the sequence - it is just "The World" (the whole world).
This is also an interesting point. I agree that Anima Mundi can be considered a possible "addition" to the main meaning. I tend to think that the new World of the after-life of Revelation 21 could also have been the original meaning of the card ("the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband").

Re: The World

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All,
Instead of anima mundi consider the thema mundi tradition for the earliest World cards (but not ruling out that the World morphed into anima mundi in later decks, which I think is what Ross's point is) - an excellent article in convenient pdf here that discusses not just the exemplar in the title but the entire tradition:
Giovanni di Paolo's 'Creation of the World' and the tradition of the 'Thema Mundi' in late medieval and renaissance art, Kristen Lippincott, The Burlington Magazine, 128, July 1990, pp. 460-468
http://www.kristenlippincott.com/assets ... nni-di.pdf

Lippincott discusses the Pisa fresco on pp-467-468 and makes a convincing argument that it too is a thema mundi-related creation of the world.

I think the frequently depicted God's creation of the world (thema mundi or not) needs to be placed in the context of civic-minded world histories that culminated in the founding and recent histories of their own cities; i.e., those exercises connect the piety of a given city with a historical connection to God over time, impliciting Him in the fortunes of their city. To give one notable example: Giovanni Villani's Cronica first six books deal with the largely legendary history of Florence, starting in Biblical times to 1264 with the next six continuing on until his own time, all the way up to 1346.

Also, reintroducing a stillborn post I made related to this subject, particualrly in regard to the hypothetical Florentine ur-tarot's World card:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=924
An excerpt:
The article by Eve Borsook (research associate at Villa I Tatti/Harvard) notes the sceptre held by Christ is "surmounted by a fleur-de-lis and also a disk displaying an unusual image that seems to represent the world or universe. A ring of stars and a ring of water encircle a series of buildings depicted in the style of contemporary Florentine architecture, including the centermost building, which evokes the Palazzo Vecchio with its crenellated tower."
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Phaeded

Re: The World

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Hello Phaeded,
thank you for Lippincott's paper, which I greatly enjoyed! The author provides the text of the inscriptions in Augustine's and Thomas' books in the Pisa fresco:

Image


Augustine: “The angels are included amongst the works of God and they are the light which received the name 'day'” (De Civitate Dei, XXII)

Thomas: ”The order of things created by God demonstrates the unity of the universe, the universe itself being called ihe one', united by an order following that by which everything is ordered” (Summa Theologica, pars prima, quaestio XLVII)


In my opinion, the “thema mundi” is not related to tarot: it is the horoscope of the creation of the world, and the sequence of the trumps does not provide a horoscope. Actually, any explicit astrological information is missing from early tarot, with the exception of the Moon/Cancer association in the Cary sheet: nothing as detailed as the astrological chart of the thema mundi.

Moreover, I think that the cosmological elements in the last trumps are better read as an end of times narration. Of course, the narration of the end of times (The Book or Revelation) mirrors the narration of the creation of the world (the Book of Genesis). But the presence of the Final Judgment makes clear that the context is not that of the creation.

In order to recognize the creation of the world in the trumps, one should reverse the order of the sequence, ignoring the clear and perfectly conventional apocalyptic meaning of Judgment, as the Count de Mellet did in his essay in Gebelin's “Le Monde Primitif”:
But like the Egyptian writing which reads to the left or the right, the twenty-first card, which was not numbered with an Arabic numeral, is nonetheless also the first, and must be read in the same way in order to understand the history; as it is the first in the game of Tarots, and in the species of divination that one performs with these images.

The twenty-first, or first card, represents the Universe by the goddess Isis in an oval, or an egg, with the four seasons in the four corners: the Man or the Angel, the Eagle, the Ox, and the Lion.
Twentieth, this one is titled the Judgment: indeed, an angel sounding a trumpet, and the men leaving the ground, had to induce a painter, not very well versed in mythology, to see in this picture only the image of the Resurrection; but the ancients looked upon the men as children of the Earth [The teeth sown by Cadmus, etc.]; Thoth wanted to express the Creation of Man …
Nineteenth, the creation of the Sun which brightens the union of man and woman, expressed by a man and a woman who give to each other their hands: this sign became, after that of Gemini, androgynous: Duo in carne una.
Eighteenth, the creation of the Moon and the terrestrial animals...
Seventeenth, the Creation of Stars and Fishes, represented by stars and Aquarius.
Sixteenth, the House of God overthrown, or the terrestrial Paradise from which man and woman are precipitated by the blazing tail of a comet or star, joined with a fall of hailstones.

Re: The World

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Marco wrote
In my opinion, the “thema mundi” is not related to tarot: it is the horoscope of the creation of the world, and the sequence of the trumps does not provide a horoscope. Actually, any explicit astrological information is missing from early tarot, with the exception of the Moon/Cancer association in the Cary sheet: nothing as detailed as the astrological chart of the thema mundi.
To clarify - I believe the World trump derives from the thema mundi/creation of the world. Instead of the entire earth we see an adaptation of the circular framing of the world replaced with a vignette in that same frame of the local principality - like in the pre-tarot image I posted above that shows Jesus with orb and sceptre - commonly held by World figures - and the world-as-Florence; Mary intercedes on behalf of the Domincians who essentially are positing themselves as the right ordering of the city->world->salvation in that painting (and Mary is the patron saint of Santa Maria Novella, the Dominican church where that painting originally hung).

To quote myself again, with emphases:
I think the frequently depicted God's creation of the world (thema mundi or not) needs to be placed in the context of civic-minded world histories that culminated in the founding and recent histories of their own cities; i.e., those exercises connect the piety of a given city with a historical connection to God over time, implicating Him in the fortunes of their city.
Now the Aquinas quote you noted above:
Thomas: ”The order of things created by God demonstrates the unity of the universe, the universe itself being called ihe one', united by an order following that by which everything is ordered (Summa Theologica, pars prima, quaestio XLVII)
The rightly ordered city is rightly ordered becasue it is aware of and worships the theological history that follows from the thema mundi/creation of world - it is all temporally connected/"united". But no, there is no thema mundi per se in the cards.

Naturally the prophetic look ahead to the End Times is also connected/”united” in biblical epic time, but there simply is no Apocalyptic evidence in the tarot. If the Devil trump card referred to is his End Time manifestation then why not also depict the Whore of Babylon (or at least hauling off a damned soul who has been judged)? Why is God in heaven in the Judgement not shown with 7 trumpets or 7 candles? Why is Strength not defeating a 7-headed dragon instead of a lion (in the case of the PMB)? “Judgement” (which should properly be called Resurrection) does not show anyone being judged and consigned to hell; it simply conveys the standard Christian belief in resurrection. The oldest “Hermit”/Time trump (again, from the PMB) would be a great place to depict the aged St. John with a scroll being shown the full panoply of time that culminates in the End Times but instead it is merely a richly robed, well-fed man sporting a Byzantine hat and a gold cane. There is ZERO apocalyptic imagery in the PMB – maybe someone from a later deck mapped something on to the original cards, but I don’t even see much evidence for that. There was a well established stock iconography in the way Revelations was depicted from the medieval through Renaissance periods - where is it?

Instead of the below, there is a "Papess" in the tarot...
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Phaeded

Barbarossaleuchter

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Barbarossaleuchter

May be a curiosity for those who interpet the World card as the New Jerusalem, as an interesting ecclesiastical-liturgical embodiment of the doctrine.

While looking up information on David in Florence, I learned that 29 December is his feast day in the Western Church (this was interesting to me in connection with his appearance in a Magi procession of 1429). This date brought me to a book which mentioned Frederick I ("Barbarossa") Hohenstaufen's canonization of Charlemagne, in the Aachener Dom (part of Aachen Cathedral now, but then the Marienkirche of the imperial household) on December 29, 1165. Fulvio Delle Donne, Il potere e la sua legittimazione: Letteratura encomiastica in onore di Federico II di Svevia (Nuovi Segnali, 2005), connects the choice of this day with David's day:


http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/carr ... nne157.jpg

(the referenced lines: "... one cannot but recognize in his [Frederick II] conception of power that same hierocratic impulse that had led Barbarossa to canonize Charlemagne on 29 December 1165, the same day in which the biblical King David is also celebrated, and that had brought Henry VI to designate his own lineage with the character of the imperialis prosapia (imperial family/line) called to reign forever over the earthly destiny of humanity.")

The reference to Barbarossa's canonization of Charlemagne led to Anne A. Latowsky, Emperor of the world : Charlemagne and the construction of imperial authority, 800-1229 (Cornell UP, 2013), p. 188:


http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/carr ... 13p188.jpg

Her description of the descent of the corona, representing the New Jerusalem as well as a symbolic coronation that signaled the End Times, was too much to resist. I had to see McGrade's paper, to see if that were all true and to get some solid primary sources.

Michael McGrade, "O Rex Mundi Triumuphator: Hohenstaufen Politics in a Sequence for Saint Charlemagne", Early Music History, vol. 17 (1998), pp. 183-219.

Of course he doesn't disappoint. The corona, chandelier, Barbarossa's Leuchter, fortunately still exists, in great condition.

The panorama of the Aachener Dom here shows what the view from under the corona up to the mosaic of Christ in Majesty surrounded by the animals of the Evangelists and the 24 Elders looks like:

http://www.aachendom.de/panorama.html

A still (you can obviously find lots of pics online of this stunning object in context):

JERUSALEM COMES DOWN


http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/carr ... Kijcoa.jpg

This view from directly underneath shows the ultimate intended visual effect: Christ enthroned in the heart of the city, surrounded by the Evangelists and 24 Elders (and matching perfectly the octagonal shape of the chapel).


http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/carr ... 697339.jpg

McGrade provides the text and a translation of the inscription on the bands:

http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/carr ... 98/219.jpg

The "CELICA IHERVSALEM" part (SE corner of the lamp, looking NW) part:


http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/carr ... usalem.jpg
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Re: Barbarossaleuchter

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Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:Barbarossaleuchter

May be a curiosity for those who interpet the World card as the New Jerusalem, as an interesting ecclesiastical-liturgical embodiment of the doctrine.

While looking up information on David in Florence, I learned that 29 December is his feast day in the Western Church (this was interesting to me in connection with his appearance in a Magi procession of 1429). This date brought me to a book which mentioned Frederick I ("Barbarossa") Hohenstaufen's canonization of Charlemagne, in the Aachener Dom (part of Aachen Cathedral now, but then the Marienkirche of the imperial household) on December 29, 1165.
1165 is one year after ...

English wiki:
A competing tradition asserts that the Biblical Magi "were martyred for the faith, and that their bodies were first venerated at Constantinople; thence they were transferred to Milan. When Barbarossa overthrew Milan, these bodies were taken to the great Dome of Cologne [which didn't exist in 1165, the building was started 1248], and there they are venerated today."

Tombs

There are several traditions on where the remains of the Magi are located, although none of the traditions is considered as an established fact or even as particularly likely by secular history.

Marco Polo claimed that he was shown the three tombs of the Magi at Saveh south of Tehran in the 1270s:
In Persia is the city of Saba, from which the Three Magi set out and in this city they are buried, in three very large and beautiful monuments, side by side. And above them there is a square building, beautifully kept. The bodies are still entire, with hair and beard remaining.
German Wiki:
Nach der Eroberung Mailands erhielt der damalige Kölner Erzbischof Rainald von Dassel die Gebeine 1164 als Geschenk von Kaiser Barbarossa. In dem Geschenk des Kaisers drückte sich auch eine politische Absicht aus. Die Gebeine der sozusagen „ersten christlichen Könige“ sollten dem Reich Barbarossas eine sakrale Rechtfertigung ohne Abhängigkeit vom Papst verleihen. Am 23. Juli 1164 gelangten die Reliquien nach Köln,[14] wo sie bis heute im Kölner Dom verehrt werden. 1903 wurde ein Teil der Reliquien an die Mailänder Basilika des Hl. Eustorgius zurückgegeben.
The Golden Shrine in the Dome (with the Magi, who in German language usually are addressed as "3 Holy Kings") is rather similar to the Golden Shrine, which is used for the bones of Charlemagne [in German: Karl der Grosse] in Aachen (ordered by Barbarossa).


3 Mages/Holy Kings


Karl der Grosse
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_der_Gro%C3%9Fe

The late honors for Karl der Grosse served the interest to meet French claims, that Charlmagne would have been a French king. Also it seems to have served Barbarossa's interest to claim independence of the pope.

David (29th of December) as 4th "Holy King" could naturally strengthen imperial interests. The day for the Holy Kings (6th of January) is not far from it, in 1165/66 likely both part of an extended Christmas festivity.

Karl der Grosse himself had the idea to imitate a church in Ravenna and the original church was build as an Octagon, closely connected to Theoderich ("Northern" king, the one, who ordered Boethius to be killed) ...

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Ravenna octagon
Started to be build 527, one year after the death of Theoderich.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_of_San_Vitale


http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aachener_Dom
The original Octagon, later a little bit increased, is the middle part.

It became the crowning place for German kings in medieval time for about 700 years.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: The World

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Right - Barbarossa's translation of the relics of the Reges Magi to Cologne is part of his ideological policy; Archbishop Rainald von Dassel was the architect of the religious angle (especially significant in both the Cologne and Aachen cults, which became joined in one symbolic gesture: coronation at Aachen, homage to Charlemagne, then procession to Cologne to pay homage to the Three Kings).

I don't think David could in any way be considered a "fourth King", come to pay homage to Christ - David IS Christ, for the allegorical exegete (and in the biblical sense of father/forefather and son being one entity, as a continuous line).

The view of the octagonal structure of San Vitale in Ravenna is better visible through this panorama -
http://www.turismo.ra.it/ita/Collegamen ... San-Vitale
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