Re: Moakley's book: text and discussion

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I want to address a loose end that I could not address earlier. Phaeded wrote (viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1168&p=19091&hilit ... nic#p19091):
3. The significance of the feathers for Giotto is most likely explained in Ruth Mellinkoff, “Demonic Winged Headgear,” Viator 16 (1985): 367–81
I got Mellinkoff's article from the library. It is about "winged headgear" imagery in France, England and Germany, specifically wings on helmets and people being depicted with wings growing out of a person's head, and specifically about the 13th and 14th century. Wings are firmly anchored masses of feathers in a characteristic "wing" shape, one on each side of the head or helmet. She says nothing about isolated feathers shown stuck in the hair of a person, much less precisely seven of them.

In Italy I am only familiar with the helmet type, similar to what is on the charioteer on some Chariot and World cards (as I recall). The seven feathers on the Giotto and PMB Fool are a different image.

Moreover, when Mellinkoff speaks of the "demonic" nature of "winged headgear," she is not making a hard and fast rule (or else, with her repeated "may have" on her first page she is speculating, the way we do on THF, when we say "the card maker may have ...). Here is an example (Mellinkoff p. 367)::
A medieval artist may have abstracted and compacted the head wings of a Mercury or a Perseus into an all-purpose badge symbolizing wicked paganism; then affixing those wings to the heads of those designated evil in Christian thought would bring disgrace to those unbelievers.
Well, I can't argue with a "may have"; yes some "may" have done that, and some "may not" have. Yes, it's possible some did. But in the Renaissance, paganism wasn't just "wicked"; it was valued as a precursor to Christianity. (Actually, that was true in the Middle Ages, too, just not to the same degree.) So when we see the head wings of a Mercury in the World card of Bologna, it is not a demonization; in fact, this Mercury is probably a stand-in for Christ, who also conveys souls between worlds. When we see the wings of a hero such as Perseus on the Bologna charioteer, it is also not a demonization. Military-type heroes were routinely portrayed with such helmets, in paintings, with no implication that they were evil. It seems to me that Ross gave some examples somehwere, perhaps on the "Bologna" thread (Unicorn Terrace). .

The rest of Mellinkoff's article pursues the "demonization" theme with many examples--all of wings, of course, not isolated feathers. But she had defined her topic narrowly from the start, excluding the humanist point of view that became dominant in the Renaissance.

Besides Phaeded's reference to Mellinkoff, I have checked Moakley's reference to Frazer in the Golden Bough. It is onlne at https://books.google.com/books?id=dQdph ... rs&f=false. Here is the most relevant passage:
Thus in the Abruzzi they hang a puppet of tow, representing Lent, to a cord, which stretches across the street from one window to another. Seven feathers are attached to the figure, and in its hand it grasps a distaff and spindle. Every Saturday in Lent one of the feathers is plucked out, and on Holy Saturday, while the bells are ringing, a string of chestnuts is burnt for the purpose of sending Lent and its meager fare to the devil.
Tow, according to Google, is "the coarse and broken part of flax or hemp prepared for spinning". This description is fairly close to what we see on Giotto's Folly and the PMB's Matto. In Frazer other examples surround this one (for which I see no reference, but I see no reason to question it), ones where feathers are legs, or leg-like appendages, on an old lady.

Clearly the seven feathers, whatever else they may signify, are in the Giotto and PMB connected to Lent.

If both the Carnival personification and the Lent personification are burnt, we have to ask, what is the difference? Simple answer: one is burned at the end of Carnival; the other is burned at the end of Lent. Their burning signifies the end of a particular season, first Carnival and then Lent.

Moakley says:
The seven feathers in his hair, and the ragged penitential garments which he wears, show that he is the personification of Lent, which puts an end to the Carnival season.
One is the personification of Carnival, the other is the personification of Lent, both Moakley and Frazer say. The penitent is not Giotto's Folly, unless perhaps his upward gaze is to God for forgiveness.

But what is the significance of removing one feather per week, starting with seven and ending with none, beyond that of merely counting off the weeks? It must be related to the significance of Lent itself. I turn to Wikipedia:
The purpose of Lent is the preparation of the believer through prayer, doing penance, repentance of sins, almsgiving,
But preparation for what?
Since, presumably, the Apostles fasted as they mourned the death of Jesus, Christians have traditionally fasted during the annual commemoration of his burial.
And:
Converts to Catholicism followed a strict catechumenate or period of instruction and discipline prior to baptism. In Jerusalem near the close of the fourth century, classes were held throughout Lent for three hours each day. With the legalization of Christianity (by the Edict of Milan) and its later imposition as the state religion of the Roman Empire, its character was endangered by the great influx of new members. In response, the Lenten fast and practices of self-renunciation were required annually of all Christians, both to show solidarity with the catechumens, and for their own spiritual benefit.
If Lent starts with seven feathers and ends with none, the feathers would seem to have something to do with sinfulness, and their removal with purification.

Moakley again:
The seven feathers in his hair, and the ragged penitential garments which he wears, show that he is the personification of Lent, which puts an end to the Carnival season.
One is the personification of Carnival, the other is the personification of Lent, both Moakley and Frazer say. The penitent is not Giotto's Folly. It is more the "wayfarer" of Bosch. And the 7 weeks of Lent turned into the 7x3 cards of the tarot sequence.

That much (except the last sentence) I think is implied by Moakley. But, yes, I want to go further.

That the puppet is burned on Holy Saturday has a special significance. Holy Saturday is when Christ goes to Limbo and frees the pre-Christian saints. Thereby the Serpent that achieved temporary victory in Eden is undone, its rule is ended, just like the Lent-doll. But the one who "goes to the Devil" after death is also Christ going to limbo.

It is like the Scapegoat of Jewish Tradition. On the one hand, it is loaded down with evil, the sins of the people over the past year. On the other hand, it frees the people from those sins; it, with the people's own acts of penitence, is the people's savior.

As I say, I do not know if Giotto's Folly is mocking religion; there are signs to the contrary, his upward gaze and his pregnancy, but perhaps that is mockery, too. If so, he is not the embodiment of Lent; he is the one who is defeated at Lent. But then we are back to the question: what is the difference between him and the Carnival King? Surely fasting and penitence, the spirit of Lent, have not been defeated.

There are differences between Giotto's Folly and the PMB Matto to take into account. The Matto looks straight ahead, toward the viewer, not up in the sky. His gaze is also rather unfocused, and so inward more than outward ("responding to internal stimuli", as it is said in the trade), like that of Bembo saints.

The PMB Fool's goiter is reminiscent of the ailing Fisher King, an important figure in the romances that these nobles read. The salmon the Fisher King traditionally fished for had phallic connotations, and his personal history is one of sexual folly (as is Folly's, on one level). He is a symbol for the ails of the world. Yet as fisher he is also Christ, the "fisher of men", whose symbol was the fish, and whose castle was not of this world. It is like the city in a bubble of the PMB "second artist" last card, which the Fool follows, in Moakley's presentation of the imagined pageant that is the tarot sequence. Another analogy is to Oedipus, Greek for "swollen foot", also a euphemism for the phallus. His sexual folly, once he realizes it, casts him out of the city of which he was king, and he blinds himself in atonement to the god of light. It is another precursor to the King of Lent, whose allegiance is to the new god of light and purity. Yet Oedipus as a result becomes a wandering seer, with Apollo's gift of prophecy, as is clear in the next drama in the trilogy

This is me talking, not Moakley now. But I am merely trying to make sense of her contrast between Lent/Fool and Carnival/Bagatino. For the Fool, she only refers to his being "the spirit of Lent" and "the successful outsider":
He is the successful outsider, the man who has escaped from the demands of society, and no longer attempts to dress or act to please it. He is the prince above all princes, who dares to do as he pleases.

That of course hardly describes the spirit of Lent! And such freedom has both evil and good aspects. To do as one pleases is not to "love your neighbor as yourself." To mock society, even to mock religion, is not to be above society or religion, any more than Erasmus's quintessential Renaissance work Praise of Folly, which certainly mocked both, meant to be above either. Or the participants in the "Mass of Fools", which made fun of Christendom's most holy ritual, felt themselves above the Mass as performed the rest of the year.

Re: Moakley's book: text and discussion

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mikeh wrote: This is me talking, not Moakley now. But I am merely trying to make sense of her contrast between Lent/Fool and Carnival/Bagatino. For the Fool, she only refers to his being "the spirit of Lent" and "the successful outsider":
He is the successful outsider, the man who has escaped from the demands of society, and no longer attempts to dress or act to please it. He is the prince above all princes, who dares to do as he pleases.

That of course hardly describes the spirit of Lent! And such freedom has both evil and good aspects. To do as one pleases is not to "love your neighbor as yourself." To mock society, even to mock religion, is not to be above society or religion, any more than Erasmus's quintessential Renaissance work Praise of Folly, which certainly mocked both, meant to be above either. Or the participants in the "Mass of Fools", which made fun of Christendom's most holy ritual, felt themselves above the Mass as performed the rest of the year.
Moakley's "definition" meets quite well the description of the role of the beggar by "Momus" in Alberti's "Momus".
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Moakley's book: text and discussion

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From the snippets of non-included pages on https://books.google.de/books?id=2ZNcrO ... ar&f=false there are passages that fit Moakley's description. I will have to read the book to see what else is there.

Erasmus wrote a "Momus", I see from Wikipedia; the character seems much like "Folly" in "Praise of Folly". Isn't the beggar just Momus in disguise? While it does fit Moakley's characterization, especially in the Prelude, It seems to me to fit the d'Este Fool more than the PMB (like the d'Este Sun card, corresponding to Alberti's Diogenes and the barrel in "Momus".)

In searching for what you have written about this beggar on THF, I noticed your visual comparison of the beggar in Momus to St. John the Baptist (viewtopic.php?f=11&t=950&p=15825&hilit=Momus#p15826). That seems appropriate to the PMB Fool. He was not characterized as a beggar; that role was taken by Jesus himself.

Also appropriate is your observation there that John the Baptist was conspicuously absent from the St. John the Baptist Day procession in Florence of 1452; that would correspond to his unnumbered status. Pratesi's account from a different source confirms your observation (viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1092&p=17993&hilit=Baptist#p17993). There was the man disrupting the procession, of course; I am still not convinced he was not part of the show.

Re: Moakley's book: text and discussion

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mikeh wrote:From the snippets of non-included pages on https://books.google.de/books?id=2ZNcrO ... ar&f=false there are passages that fit Moakley's description. I will have to read the book to see what else is there.

Erasmus wrote a "Momus", I see from Wikipedia; the character seems much like "Folly" in "Praise of Folly". Isn't the beggar just Momus in disguise? While it does fit Moakley's characterization, especially in the Prelude, It seems to me to fit the d'Este Fool more than the PMB (like the d'Este Sun card, corresponding to Alberti's Diogenes and the barrel in "Momus".)

In searching for what you have written about this beggar on THF, I noticed your visual comparison of the beggar in Momus to St. John the Baptist (viewtopic.php?f=11&t=950&p=15825&hilit=Momus#p15826). That seems appropriate to the PMB Fool. He was not characterized as a beggar; that role was taken by Jesus himself.

Also appropriate is your observation there that John the Baptist was conspicuously absent from the St. John the Baptist Day procession in Florence of 1452; that would correspond to his unnumbered status. Pratesi's account from a different source confirms your observation (viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1092&p=17993&hilit=Baptist#p17993). There was the man disrupting the procession, of course; I am still not convinced he was not part of the show.
Image


We never persecuted 15th century theater plays very much ... Alberti wrote a theater play himself, actually it was his start as a writer.
It became a theater tradition (according the researches to this play of Alberti), that 2 funny characters were used, mostly from the lower society. If this is correct in theater plays of 15th century, I don't know, I haven't read them. Likely it's difficult to understand the jokes, if the text is only in Italian. Jokes are usually difficult to translate.

I would call it the Lucianic factor. Lucian's writing was very satirical, this inspired the Italian spirit. Alberti was introduced to Lucian by Guarino around 1440. Alberti wrote a few other Lucian interpretations before he wrote the Momus, I remember.

Luigi Pulci, also a funny author + other Pulci family members, was engaged to write scenes of religious content for the shows of the San Giovanni festivity. Likely there was opportunity to import funny aspects. Lucrezia Tornabuoni was engaged in the sponsorship of these events ... likely this was the way, how Pulci came in contact to the Medici family. Pulci became the first who mentioned "Minchiate" and there is a poem of him with other words close to Minchiate. And Minchiate was a mockery word. And Momus stood for "mockery".

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1038
... maybe this is a good read.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Moakley's book: text and discussion

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Thanks, Huck.

I have been doing more investigation of that c. 1370 painting that the Bologna Pinacoteca calls "St. Bernard founding the Cistercians." I wondered, why would the author or publisher (Cambridge University press) have put such a painting on the cover of a book about the Umiliati, if it had no basis? I may have found the answer. It does not speak either for or against Moakley's thesis about the Popess, except to suggest that the painting is irrelevant. I post this investigation here only to save others the trouble.

The author, Frances Andrews, does not discuss the painting at all, that I can find. The book jacket, on the back, describes it as "Bernard of Clairvaux giving a rule to a group of religious, perhaps the Humiliati". The author may not have approved. But why mention them at all, even with a "perhaps", if it was Cistercians?

What I find is that in a Chronicon by a Milanese Dominican monk named Fiamma, c. 1340, Bernard is in fact described as giving the rule to a group of religious in Milan, not Cistercians but rather those who became the Umiliati (Andrews pp. 10-11; I omit the passage on Pipino, which is neutral on our issue).
The first surviving attempts at a retrospective account of the origins of the Humiliati are the early fourteenth-century writings of two Dominicans, a circumstance not without significance in view of the association between the two orders during the thirteenth century, though neither author devoted substantial space to the theme. The Bolognese Francesco Pipino (died after 1328) made little more than passing reference to the beginnings of the Humiliati in a general chronicle, while the Milanese Galvano Fiamma (1283—c. 1344) inserted short but differing passages concerning the Humiliati or the actions of Guy de Porta Orientale, an early figure linked with them, in three related works. (11) Of these accounts the earliest is probably that of Pipino, ...
_____________
11. Chronicon fratris Francisci Pipini, ed. Muratori, cited Zanoni, pp. 11-12 and ii, I; Galvano Fiamma, Chronicon extravagans et chronicon maius[/i[ (ad an 1216), pp. 506-773; Manipulus florum, col. 632. There is no full edition of Galvano's third history, the Galvagnana, Brera AE x 10, fo. 70v, but see now Alberzoni, 'San Bernardo e gli Umiliati', pp. 96-124, who includes the text of the relevant passage, p. 103 n. 22; on Pipino and Fiamma, see Kaeppeli, Scriptores ordinis proedicatorum medii aevii, 1, pp. 392-5; ii, pp. 6-10.
10
...
Fiamma, by contrast, was a prolific and much more imaginative writer, and in his discussion of the Humiliati he made some surprising claims. (13) In all three accounts he associated Guy de Porta Orientale/i] with Bernard of Clairvaux in the foundation of the Cistercian house of Chiaravalle Milanese in 1135. In the earliest (the Galvagnana, written between 1329 and 1340), he then described the 'building' of the convenio sancti Bernardi of the Third order of the brethren in the Porta Orientale of Milan by this same Guy and its confirmation by Innocent III, from whose title its name derived. (14) These brethren subsequently founded the order of the Humiliati and carried out visitation of them.

In his second account, the Manipulus, Fiamma maintained that on his way back through Milan, Bernard himself organised the 'order of St Bernard', now known as the fratres de Conegio and whose first house had been built by Guy in the Porta Orientale (a community of Humiliati Tertiaries when Fiamma was writing). He claimed that Guy, who assisted Bernard on that occasion, also went to Rome to receive confirmation of this order from Innocent III and he repeated the association of the name with the pope's title and the role of the Tertiaries as founders and visitors of the First and Second orders. In this version he added that they were exempt from communal taxes in Milan, a detail which enhances the impression that Fiamma was particularly concerned with the fate of the Tertiaries.
_____________
13 See also Andrews, ‘Principiunt et origo ordinis: the Humiliati and their origins', pp. 149-6I.
14 Galvagnana, Brera AE x 10, fo. 70v: 'ab Innocenti tertio dictum est ordo tennis'. For the dates see V. Hunecke, 'Die kirchenpolitischen Exkurse in den Chroniken des Galvaneus Flamma OP (1283—ca. 1344)', Deutsches Archiv fur Erforschung des Mittelalters, 25 (1969), 111-208, 119-28; see also Alherzoni, 'San Bernardo e gli Uniiliati', p. 116 n. 44.

Fiamma's idea that "Tertiary" is associated with the "III" of "Innocent III" is part of why Andrews calls Fiamma "imaginative". Also, Innocent III wasn't pope until 1198, and Bernard's visit to Milan was 1135. If so, this Guy had to be either extremely young when helping Bernard or very old in visiting Rome (or both). Fortunately, notarial evidence has been found that there was a Guy de Porto Orientale the right age in 1135, and he had a son of the same name the right age to have gone to Rome in 1201, when the Umiliati got the papal stamp of approval.

Andrews adds that in the fourteenth century the Umiliati were particularly concerned to cultivate a cult around their alleged founder, St. Bernard. In Fiamma's Milan, the Tertiaries had disappeared altogether by 1360, and the rest were shrinking. So Fiamma's account may have been influenced by such concern. (If you are wondering, I cannot find where Andrews mentions the third work in relation to Bernard or Guy. Also, she seems to have mentioned the Galavgnana once as third and once as first.)

It seems to me that the painting, done in Bologna where the Umiliati did have a house (per Andrews p. 149), may have been done with that goal in mind as well. I suspect the painter had no idea what habit the Umiliati wore, much less their Tertiaries. The Cistercians wore black over white, on formal occasions. What they wore while working I have not determined. White would seem impractical.

The next writer on the subject, John of Brera, in a history of the Umiliati completed in 1419 Milan, finds no special relationship at all with Bernard, Andrews reports (p. 13). Most later historians agreed with John, but not all. Andrews, speaking of a certain Piere Heylot, a Franciscan Tertiary, says
He accepted Fiamma's account of Bernard's role in giving the Humiliati a rule in the 1130s and thus rejected John of Brera's date for the origins of the order, arguing that they could not have been without a rule for over a hundred years.

It seems that John's story of the glorious foundation of the order had them being originally Lombard nobles exiled to Germany by Emperor Henry II (1002-1024). I cannot find where Andrews says when John had them being given a rule.

Fortunately for us, the truth of these matters is of no concern. It is what was thought at the time that matters, and it seems that different things were thought, or imagined, at different times.

John of Brera also states that part of what induced the Emperor's clemency was that in Germany the nobles had the put aside their rich clothing and wore ash colored habits, i.e. undyed cloth (baratino) instead, for both sexes. This is in chs. 1-3, p. 230, Andrews says on p. 13 n. 30.

I also find that an illumination in that work (dated by the Ambrosiana as "15th century") shows them in just that way (Ambrosiana G. 301, at http://www.scalarchives.com/web/ricerca ... nguage=eng):
Image

Of course this for a different age, in which orders were competing with one another for the honor of being the most humble.

The Umiliati themselves seem to have either left no pictures (like the Cistercians, they were not big on ornamentation), or they got lost or destroyed after the male side of the order was suppressed in 1571. It would seem that if Manfredi as Popess was given a brown habit, the reason would not be in virtue of being a Umiliata, but rather of what the trial document said of her.

Andrews does give the source for the oft-repeated but little-documented idea that Andrea Visconti was appointed General of the Umiliati Order by the pope in 1401 (p. 15). It is again the (Chronicon) of John of Brera, preface, p. 230 (That he was appointed by the pope rather than elected by the order as in former times is of concern to John.) The work is in Spinelli, "La diffusione del culto di San Bernardo', p. 205 n. 33. Given that Visconti would have still been General at the time the work was finished, I would think John is reliable on that point.

Re: Moakley's book: text and discussion

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I thought of one unresolved issue from Shephard's thesis that except for the cards obviously inserted into the tarot sequnce, the minchiate could have been the original tarot. The problem is that three of the four extra virtue cards are also in the Cary-Yale, so they, and also Prudence, have to be treated separately from the other minchiate-only cards. One question then is, how would they fit into the schema of Petrarch's 6 triumphs applying to groups of cards? Shephard doesn't say, but Moakley herself assigned them to Petrarch's Triumph of Fame. That makes sense, as long as "Fama" is re-interpreted as "Eternal Glory" instead of "Worldly Fame". Then there is the question, how many triumphs would there have been in this proto-minchiate, proto-tarot? It could be as many as 25 plus the Fool (as Hurst in fact maintained for the CY). However 24 works better for Dummett's 3:2 ratio hypothesis (as Dummett maintained for the CY), and also for my hypothesis that the triumphs were originally assigned to the four suits. However we have to allow that the tarot not only might have contained fewer than 22 special cards, but also that it might have contained more, as many as 25. This counts as a reasonable hypothesis, even if I think that 16 or 14 is the most likely.

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In his essay on Moakley, Hurst quotes from a very interesting paragraph from Dummett's Game of Tarot. He leaves off the end of the paragraph, unfortunately. Here is the whole thing (on p. 88):
Why, then, were these cards called 'triumphs'? Many have tried to explain the word from the use of the twenty-one triumph cards in play, namely as 'triumphing' over the other cards; and we cannot say for sure that this explanation is incorrect. A brilliant suggestion of Miss Moakley's is, however, more attractive. This is that the name has nothing to do with the use of the cards, but only with what is shown on them, the series of triumph cards representing a sort of triumphal procession. As documented by Burckhardt and Miss Moakley, a favourite entertainment in the courts of Renaissance Italy was the staging of just such triumphal processions, with floats bearing figures either derived from classical mythology or representing abstractions such as Love, Death, etc.: a transformation of the utterly serious triumph of a Roman general or Emperor into an elegant allegorical entertainment. A frequent ingredient in such Renaissance triumphs was the idea underlying Petrarch's poem I Trionfi, in which each successive personified abstraction triumphs over, that is, vanquishes, the last; thus, in the poem, love triumphs over gods and men, chastity over love, death over chastity, fame over death, time over fame and eternity over time. The case would be clinched if it were possible to explain the subjects of the triumph cards of the Tarot pack as forming a triumphal procession of this sort; but in spite of Miss Moakley's determined efforts, supplemented subsequently by those of Mr Ronald Decker, such an explanation, while plausible in principle, is difficult to make convincing in detail. Nevertheless, in default of a better explanation, we may accept it as likely, though by no means certain, that it was this association of ideas which prompted the use of the name 'triumphs' for the additional cards of the Tarot pack.
Dummett has misrepresented Moakley's thesis. For her the explanation for the word "triumphs" applied to the card game and deck does have to do with the association with Petrarch's poem, but not, except indirectly through Petrarch and as the basis for Renaissance processions, with an association to triumphal processions of the Roman sort, that of a general or Emperor. Her main analogy, for their spirit, is to the type of processions seen on the last night of Carnival. As far as the origin of particular cards, she sees only two as arising from actual figures in that procession, the "Bagattino" and the Fool, with the latter as a character on the sidelines, until the end. But she does not exclude an analogy, for other cards, to religious processions and wedding processions. It is the generic idea of the public procession that she is comparing to the tarot sequence.

In such a comparison, it is obviously not true that each float or personage in the actual processions would "triumph over" the one before. I do not understand why Dummett reverted to that interpretation, which he had posed as an unlikely alternative to Moakley in the first sentence. That is his second misinterpretation. Moakley only applies the idea of "triumphing over" to groups of cards. Any difficulties with that idea--really, ambiguities and unclarities--have have been ironed out by Shephard. While Shephard was writing after Dummett, his improvements or clarifications are not hard to figure out.

One ambiguity has to do with the Celestials. Are they part of the triumph of Time or of Eternity? Moakley says both things. Another is the idea that the sequence is a ribald reinterpretation of Petrarch. Actually, she only interprets some of the cards in this ribald way. Such picking and choosing was characterized by O'Neill as ad hoc and so not explanatory at all. However she was simply reporting what she saw. In science, failed or only approximately true results do not invalidate the theory for which the experiment is made. There may simply be other factors involved, as yet unknown. This is the rule rather than the exception: there are always unknown factors that must be allowed for; that is why experiments mostly never in fact accord exactly with the prediction.

Over the 50 years since Moakley's book, subsequent discoveries have shown what some of the other factors might have been. Most notably, there has been the idea that the tarot developed in stages, an idea that even Dummett, after opposing it for decades, finally came to accept on a limited basis. Moreover, the stages might have involved different cities. In such cases, Dummett's argument against changes in the order of trumps does not apply, because at the beginning in non-original towns, there is no previous order. Dummett in 2004 allowed that the tarot might have begun in Milan, for example, been augmented in Ferrara by adding the 3 virtues, and the order of the virtues changed when they were added elsewhere. Dummett says (see viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1073&p=16421&hilit ... ohn#p16421):
Players in other places heard of this addition, and copied it; but they did not know where in the rankng these three cards were supposed to go. They made up their own minds on the question, with divergent results.
Other researchers, before and after Dummett's 2004 article, have used the same principles in regard to other cards. Thus what may have started out as all-serious as Petrarch himself might have had ribald cards, among others, added and serious cards subtracted, going from one city to another, and at least minor changes in the order and depictions (serious vs. ribald) as well.

So while Moakley may have made mistakes, questionable interpretations, or ambiguities in detail, her overall theory remains totally defensible, in my opinion at least, as long as we go by what she actually wrote as opposed to the summaries that others have made of her.

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Mikeh concluded his review of Moakley :
"So while Moakley may have made mistakes, questionable interpretations, or ambiguities in detail, her overall theory remains totally defensible, in my opinion at least, as long as we go by what she actually wrote as opposed to the summaries that others have made of her."

I'd add...

1. Interest of Moakley
From an arithmological point of view, what I see of interest is that one of the first modern major historians of Tarot paid attention to it's numerical structure and did not dismiss it. She does not support a thesis as if the numbers in Tarot were random. On the contrary, she refers to Pythagorean arithmetic - focusing on Triangular numbers.
She considers 21 as a Triangular number of base 6 :
Gnomons : 21 = 1+2+3+4+5+6
She considers 56 as a Pyramidal number - that is stricto sensu a Tetrahedral triangular number.
Serie : 1, 4, 10, 20, 35, 56
Gnomons : 1 + 3 + 6 + 10 + 15 + 21 = 56
She finally considers 78 as the Triangular of 12 :
"Add the "wild" Fool to get seventy-eight cards and you have another triangular number with a base of twelve. "
78=1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10+11+12
I believe also she emphased on the Tetractys... but I did not find the reference.

2. Limit of Moakley : she did not unearth the pentagonal Number 22 prefering a reference to dices combinaisons of 21 and 56.
http://www.sgdl-auteurs.org/alain-bouge ... Biographie

Re: Moakley's book: text and discussion

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Alain,

did you note, that the old Greeks had another way to reach the number 56 in their lot book systems?
Five 4-sided dice were used, carrying the number 1-3-4-6.
forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1171&p=19177#p19172

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... anybody, who has eyes in the head, can note, that the number 56 in the card deck with 10 number cards and 4 four court cards comes from the condition, that there are suits with 14 cards, and if there are 4 suits, then there 4x14 = 56 cards.
Any fantasy, that this has something to do with 1+3+6+10+15+21, only confuses the natural condition. If a deck has only 13 or 12 cards in each suit the connected numbers are 52 or 48, and nobody is really surprised, that this is so.

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1-1-1-1-1 .... 1 dominates
---
1-1-1-1-3 .... 1 dominates
1-1-1-1-4
1-1-1-1-6
---
1-1-1-3-3 .... 1 dominates
1-1-1-4-4
1-1-1-6-6
1-1-1-3-4
1-1-1-3-6
1-1-1-4-6
---
1-1-3-4-6 .... 1 dominates
---
1-3-3-4-4 .... 1 dominates
1-3-3-6-6
1-4-4-6-6

This are all combinations, in which "1 dominates". It are 14 combinations.
As each number (1-3-4-6) can dominate, there are naturally 4x14 = 56 combinations.
Last edited by Huck on 11 Mar 2017, 14:30, edited 1 time in total.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Moakley's book: text and discussion

100
Huck wrote:Alain,

did you note, that the old Greeks had another way to reach the number 56 in their lot book systems?
Five 4-sided dice were used, carrying the number 1-3-4-6.
forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1171&p=19177#p19172

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Thanks for the link. I had not noticed it ...

See also :

Steve :
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1168&start=20#p19079

I :
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1168&start=20#p19078


You also commented :

"... anybody, who has eyes in the head, can note, that the number 56 in the card deck with 10 number cards and 4 four court cards comes from the condition, that there are suits with 14 cards, and if there are 4 suits, then there 4x14 = 56 cards.
Any fantasy, that this has something to do with 1+3+6+10+15+21, only confuses the natural condition. If a deck has only 13 or 12 cards in each suit the connected numbers are 52 or 48, and nobody is really surprised, that this is so."

Well, this comment doesn't change an iota to my observation about Moakley's attention to Triangular Numbers...
http://www.forum.tarothistory.com/viewt ... 181#p19179

As for my take about the Tetractys game , see summary on :
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5Hg6j ... FmdTg/view
http://www.sgdl-auteurs.org/alain-bouge ... Biographie