An Appendix to
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1102&start=460#p18457 and then
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1102&start=460#p18464
I want to pursue further the lists of the various orders that I constructed, to see what is suggested regarding "early" vs. "late" cards. This is off-topic, but I am putting it here because it follows a train of thought I began here. It has nothing to do with the Pythagoreans, other than keeping the 1 + 4 + 7 + 10 format. Even then, it doesn't really matter here where the Fool goes.
Here again are the various orders, by section as defined by 1 + 4 + 7 + 10. For Alciati, I put translations of his Latin titles:
A, B, C (1 card): Bagat
A (4 cards):
Rosenwald: Popess, Empress, Emperor, Pope
Bologna: 4 papi.
B (4 cards):
Sermones: Empress, Emperor, Popess, Pope;
Metropolitan: Popess, Empress, Emperor, Pope
C order (4 cards)
Geoffroy, Noblet, etc.: Popess, Empress, Emperor, Pope
Alciati (same order, different titles): Priestess (or Priest's Wife), Queen, King, Priest
Maison Academique: Popess, Emperor, Empress, Pope
A order (7 cards). I put the confirmed ones in bold:
Bologna: Love, Chariot, Temperance, Fortitude, Justice, Wheel, Old Man
Charles VI, Rosenwald (for which last 2 unclear): Love, Temperance, Fortitude, Justice, Chariot, Wheel, Old Man
Orfeo, Catania: Love, Temperance, Fortitude, Justice,
Wheel, Chariot, Old Man
Colonna:
Love, [Temperance, Fortitude, Justice, Old Man, ?]
Chariot, Wheel
B order (7 cards):
Sermones: Temperance, Love, Chariot, Fortitude, Wheel, Old Man, Hanged Man
Garzoni/Bertoni, Met., Pomeran, Rouen, Anonymous (appropriati), Imperiali, Citolini: Temperance, Chariot, Love, Fortitude, Wheel, Old Man, Traitor/Hanged Man.
C order (7 cards):
Susio, Piscina, Vieville: Love, Justice, Chariot, Fortitude, Wheel, Old Man, Traitor/Hanged Man
Alciati: Justice, Fortitude, Love, Chariot, Wheel, Old Man, Cross (Crux)
Geoffroy, Noblet, etc.: Love, Chariot, Justice, Old Man, Wheel, Fortitude, Hanged Man
A order (10 cards) Traitor, Death, Devil, Fire, Star, Moon, Sun, World, Angel, Fool
B order (10 cards): Death, Devil, Fire, Star, Moon, Sun, World, Justice, Angel, Fool
C order (10 cards): Death, Temperance (Fama for Alciati), Devil (Daemon in Alciati), Lightning (Maison-Dieu in Noblet etc), Star, Moon, Sun (Phoebus for Alciati), World, Angel, Fool
It seems to me that the degree of variability in the three sections tells us something. The middle section has by far the most variability. The virtues are in no particular order; in B and C one is even outside the section. The other triumphs generally follow a recognizable order: Love, Chariot, Wheel, Old Man, Death. This fits a Petrarch-like progression.
Cards 2-5 basically have only 1 variation, 1 card, if we ignore the Maison Academique, which would make 2.
Cards 15-19 are always in the same order, exactly, with no variation. Finally, the Angel and World are always at the end, if not always in the same order, usually the last 2 but interrupted by Justice in B. And we are stipulating the Fool at the end, even if not confirmed and in fact in literary sources mostly disconfirmed. That is not important for the present post.
Dummett hypothesized that differences in the order were due to local variations that developed because players in one locality were isolated from players in other localities. They are like random mutations, apparently, but influenced by individuals' preferences and perceptions of what should follow what. If so, the more variation from region to region, the earlier the cards would have spread to all those regions. So 15-19 would be late cards and the virtues early ones. Probably also Love/Chariot/Wheel/Old Man/Death/ is early, too, even if mostly in the same order, because of the variations that happen around them. That quasi-Petrarchan sequence makes easy sense, unlike the order of the virtues. I would expect the other two, Angel and World, to be early, too, because of their variability relative to each other.
Of the Imperial and Spiritual powers, Popess is always before Pope, and Pope always 5th, whereas Empress and Emperor occasionally switch the order relative to each other and the other cards. So Empress and Emperor, being more variable in relation to each other, are probably earlier than Pope and Popess. Hanged Man is late because it is invariably before Death.
It is difficult to say anything about the Bagat and the Fool, because their positions are unique. Because they are always where they are, it is tempting to say they are late; on the other hand, it is easy to remember which card is first and which card is not in the order at all, the first by its name "bagatella", meaning "thing of little value" as well as "illusionist"; the second by its role in the game, if it had that role from the first.
A surprising result is that the Old Man is almost always just in front of the Hanged Man. Perhaps it is late, too--although its position might be the result of an "late" decision to make Time refer to time before death, rather than cosmic time, as it would have early on. Or else Time early on was not the Old Man, but instead the Sun (the opening image in Petrarch's poem, complete with chariot), stuck in between World and Angel, later refigured as a Celestial at the same time the Old Man was put in. That would require a less drastic change in the sequence.
So when would this change have occurred, from either an Old Man or the Sun as cosmic time, in the sequence between Fame and Eternity, to human time, put before Death? Perhaps the illuminations of Petrarch's poem, in different places and times, can give us some clues.
From Lombardy, there is an illumination of what I think is the Triumph of Time. I think it is Apollo in his chariot, just as in the opening lines of Petrarch's poem, making the horses go fast. It is by an illuminator active from 1418 to 1459. Trapp dates this one to c. 1440. For more see
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=858&p=13655&hilit= ... rch#p13655:
For Florence, Susan Cohen in "Early Renaissance personifications of time and changing concepts of temporality" (
Renaissance studies 14:3 (2000), pp. 301-328) makes the point that the pre-1450 illustrations there of Petrarch's
Trionfi showed him holding a sphere rather than an hourglass: in one, it is an armillary sphere, in another it is divided into three parts labeled "Europe - Africa - Asia", in another it is just a sphere.
Armillary sphere (Florence, Biblioteca Lauriziana, Strozzi 461, fol. 44r):
Tripartite sphere (1442, Biblioteca Lauriziana, Pal. 72, fol. 86r):
Both are attributed to Apollonio di Giovanni. Since hourglass versions started appearing after 1450, that is a reasonable time for the change to have occurred.
Even then, the sphere persisted in a few cases. There is this one, probably later than the other two, attributed to Zanobi Strozzi, about which I have no further information: (
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cate ... _tempo.JPG). Wikipedia says he was engaged in illumination production, with Pesellino and Domenico di Michelino, "between 1446 and 1454", and another stint, with Cheriaco. These periods were for choir books, but his collaborators are known
Trionfi illustrators..
When Time started being represented by an old man with an hourglass, the hourglass was a natural symbol of the brevity of life (as Cohen says), hence no longer (I think) cosmic time, but human time. The image would then fit better before Death in the tarot sequence rather than after (I cannot speculate on which came first, the tarot card or the Trionfi illumination with the hourglass). Then the celestials would serve to represent cosmic time.
In this vein, there is a late 15th century Florentine engraving where Time holds an armillary sphere and there are a sun and a moon overhead
.
It remains true that there is no extant tarot card for Time as I have imagined him, as the Sun/Apollo or holding a sphere. It is only a reasonable hypothesis. What I have, from the extant versions, is 11 "early" cards (Empress, Emperor, Love, Temperance, Fortitude, Justice, Chariot, Wheel, Death, World, Angel; 7 "late" ones (Popess, Pope, Hanged Man, Devil, Tower, Star, Moon, Sun), and 4 where it is hard to say (Fool, Bagat, Old Man, Sun), but probably the first two are late and at least one of the others. Early Hope, Faith, Charity seems almost required, making 14 "early" cards.
If Prudence is a separate card (as opposed to being put in place of, or amalgamated with, something else, as happens in a few literary sources, e.g. in place of Temperance by Piscina, or Hanged Man by Imperiali), and either Old Man or Sun is there as Time, that would be 16.
Old Man shows up as "late" in my lists, because he is mostly in one place in the order; but that "late" status may be due to being moved from the penultimate position originally, as Petrarchan "Time". Alternatively, the Sun might have had that function, and then been moved, so that it shows up as "late".
This result is much the same as what I have arrived at from others means. It is also like Phaeded's, if my view of Time and Prudence is rejected. We only differ by 2 cards (i.e. Fame and Prudence as separate cards early on, and Time, whatever it is, which he puts late). We have of course discussed these differences at great length with no resolution.