Well, I will continue from where I left off, hypothesizing, as Ross and Ludophone did, a major source of scoring points coming from combinations the four moral categories, to which I add the kings of the suits corresponding to those categories.
Marziano’s 4x5 grid seems made to order for other educational games, probably for parents and children to play together, aimed to "arouse the player to virtue". In particular, the four cardinal virtues seem to have had a traditional correlation with the four suit-symbols: mirrors (round hand mirrors) and coins with Prudence; swords with Justice; columns and sticks with Batons; and food/drink and cups with Temperance. My examples are the 1404 funeral oration for Gian Galeazzo Visconti (Moakley 1966, p. 41 n. 1) and the "Game of the King" devised by Innocenzo Ringhierei in
Cento Giuochi liberali et d'ingegnio, 1551 Bologna, p. 132, in Google Books). A 4 by something grid enables them to be correlated with other cards, applying the virtues to the life-concerns that Boccaccio and especially Petrarch articulated, the former in
Amorosa Visione and the latter in his
Trionfi. The Petrarch
Trionfi illustrations of the 1440s, done right at the time when the game was gaining in popularity in Florence even while technically illegal, are a useful guide to what images correspond to what cards there.
In Florence and Bologna (as elsewhere) later accounts give only three virtue cards, and there they are all in a row, only marginally associated with the Petrarchans. That there were originally four seems indicated by the presence of four suits and, at least in Bologna, four dignitaries. Also, the Cary-Yale, since it has four out of seven principal virtues of the Church, probably originally had seven, as Dummett reasoned in
Game of Tarot. All seven are also in Minchiate, a game that seems to have gone back at least to 1466 and also seems referenced in a c. 1440 poem by Burchioni (for which search that keyword on THF). 6 Petrarchans with 4 dignitaries and 4 virtues equals 14 total, a number that corresponds to the "14 figures" of Ferrara 1440 and the 70 card decks of Ferrara 1457, as well as being equal to the number of cards in an ordinary suit, at least by 1425 when San Bernardino preached his sermon against gambling in Bologna.
Moreover of the other nine triumphs, five are always found in exactly the same order, unlike my chosen 14, which vary from place to place and time to time. This suggests that they were added during a time of peace and cooperation among regions, as opposed to isolation and individual self-assertion of city-states, which was the case until the Peace of Lodi in 1453 or a little earlier. Three of the four others are not part of the three other obvious categories and also are always in the same place in the orders as they appear later: the Bagattello always first, the Fool always a wild card, and the Hanged Man always just before Death (even if in the Rosenwald that position is not entirely clear). The Wheel is a special case.
That the Hanged Man substituted for Prudence at some point is suggested by Imperiali's poem, which describes the Hanged Man as the image between Death and the Old Man but does not include that title, but instead uses the word Prudence. It is prudent not to betray one's Lord, of course. It may have been a situation in which a d'Este ruler thought that, as protection against plots, having a card of the Hanged Man would be more effective propaganda than a lady holding a mirror. Leonello in particular, as an illegitimate son, was threatened by plots from his legitimate younger brothers, enough so that Niccolo did not even name him his heir until on his deathbed.
So if we start with 4 suits, 4 papi, 4 virtues, 6 Petrarchans we get:
Ur-Tarot, 14 triumphs
Row 4: 14 Eternity, 12 Fame, 8
Justice, 4 Papa, King of
Swords
Row 3: 13 Time, 11 Death, 7
Prudence, 3 Papa, King of
Coins
Row 2:---------------, 10 Pudicizia, 6
Fortitude, 2 Papa, King of
Batons
Row 1:------------------9 Love, 5
Temperance, 1 Papa, King of
Cups
In labeling this configuration as an “Ur-Tarocchi” I do not mean to say that it is one that actually was used; it is merely the source of the rest. Even then, the ordering of the virtues is somewhat flexible. As far as actual practice, the order of some of the Petrarchans among themselves is flexible, too, because there were different orders of virtues and different ways of understanding Petrarch's categories. One of them,
Pudicizia, was a virtue similar to Temperance and could simply be removed and replaced by the virtues, to get the order seen in Florence. So while the Chariot card seems to be
Pudicizia in the Cary-Yale, owing to the jousting shield, it seems related to
Fama elsewhere, either as a lady on a chariot holding a sword in one hand and a golden globe in the other as Boccaccio had described "the fame of Worldly folk," (
Amorosa Visione VI.75) or as a male military leader in a triumphal parade (thanks to Nathaniel and Phaeded for straightening me out on this point). As such, Fame could be before rather than after Death.
Now it is just a matter of running the three main orders through the grid, emphasizing the horizontal connections between virtues and Petrarchans. This is something I have already done in previous posts and on my blog “From Marziano to the Ludus Triumphorum”; nothing has changed except that now the horizontal rows are scoring combinations that have to be learned in order to play the game. Previously I had presented them as triumphs that took priority in tricks over other triumphs if they were in the same row as the suit led. Also, I had not thought to include the Kings with the rest.
In the 1440s-1450s Florentine Petrarch illuminations, we see Time depicted as an old man, in accord with the ancient equation Chronos = Cronos. This is not Petrarch’s cosmic time, but that of an individual life. As such, he belongs before Death but later than the triumphator. Finally, the horizontal association between Justice and Eternity suggests the image of the Angel of the Last Judgment, an image of the victory of Eternity over time. with which he himself ended his poem. The result, except perhaps in Milan (where the Cary-Yale World card suggests Fame, the lady holding a trumpet) is two images for Eternity, one of a being transcending Time, such as Christ, as in the Petrarch illuminations, and the other as the Angel (as Nathaniel has argued). So we get, at least as one alternative:
Type A, Florence, 14 cards
Row 4: 14 Angel, 12 Death, 8
Justice, 4 Pope, King of
Swords
Row 3: 13 World, 11 Old Man, 7
Fortitude, 3 Emperor, King of
Batons
Row 2: --------, 10 Chariot, 6
Temperance, 2 Popess, King of
Cups
Row 1: --------, 9
Prudence, 5 Love, 1 Empress, King of
Coins
To learn the point-getting combinations of the game, is also to learn the associations between virtues and life concerns as given in the horizontal associations: Old Age and the attainment of Eternal Glory with Christ will require Fortitude, and military victors should exercise moderation and self-control. Love, besides being moderated by Temperance, also is controlled by Prudence.
The above would be the original order for Florence, more or less, with Aquinas's order of virtues. In Bologna the positions of Fortitude and Prudence would be swapped, for the order of Wis. Sol. 8:7. I am not prejudging which of Florence and Bologna would have come first. That in Bologna the Chariot was originally above the virtues, as in Florence, is suggested by the earliest attestation of its order, that of Croce in 1602 (
Lotto festevole, fatto in villa), and also by the Chariot's presence among the two sheets in Paris, with 11 cards of the last 12 of the Bolognese order. If in fact the Chariot was before the virtues from the beginning, and Croce’s composition represents a later innovation that didn’t catch on, all that changes is that Prudence would be one or two cards after Justice. The Chariot as lust for power is in just as much need of tempering by the virtues as the other appetites.
In Bologna the four dignitaries all have the same rank, just as in the case of the four kings. I think that was probably true from the beginning but for our purposes this, too, doesn’t matter. In Florence this may have been true as well, but if so it was soon a hierarchy. That there was an Empress in Florence is suggested by its presence in the Alessandro Sforza deck (for which search "Palermo" here). We don't actually know if there was ever was a fourth dignitary in Florence. If not, it makes no difference to the grid, except perhaps for a change in the order of virtues, if it is desired to keep Justice paired with the Angel. If there is one, I put Popess with Cups and Temperance because Cups associate to the communion cup, while Empresses typically brought with them a substantial dowry.
In Milan there is an innovation, probably to enhance the educational value in the eyes of Filippo Maria Visconti. The original order did well by having Love governed by Temperance, but what matters for Filippo, is that it be governed by Justice, that is to say, the terms of the marriage contract and the mutual obligations of husband and wife; hence the handshake, seen on both the Cary-Yale and PMB cards. The Lombard placement of Justice is then a kind of tacit justification for Filippo's execution of his wife for adultery.
As for Temperance, it is good advice to an Old Man, to forestall an early death. So to further enhance the educational potential, he alternates virtues in the vertical direction. To do so, however, will mess up the rows, as he will then have two virtues in one row.
Lombard order, 14 cards of Florence/Bologna (not adopted)
Row 4: 14 Angel,
12 Justice, 8 Fortitude, Love, 4 Kings of Swords and
Batons
Row 3: 13 World, 11 Death, 7 Chariot, 3 Pope, King of ?
Row 2: ---------
10 Prudence, 6 Temperance, 2 Emperor, Kings of
Coins and
Cups
Row 1: --------9 Old Man, 5 Love, 1 Popess, King of ?
The solution is to add one more Triumph of the Petrarchan variety, namely Fortune, which in Boccaccio's version was in fact the major triumphator. To do so, however, and still have the same number of cards in this suit as in the others, i.e. 14, he will have to remove a Triumph, at one end or the other of the sequence. The obvious one to remove is the Popess. So now we have:
Type C, Lombardy, 14 triumphs: Brera-Brambilla
Row 4: 14 Angel,
12 Temperance, 8 Wheel, 4 Love, King of
Cups
Row 3: 13 World, 11 Death,
7 Fortitude, 3 Pope, King of
Batons
Row 2: ---------,
10 Prudence, 6 Chariot, 2 Emperor, King of
Coins
Row 1: ---------, 9 Old Man,
5 Justice, 1 Empress, King of
Swords
The first three rows have good didactic associations. Temperance is still a virtue governing Love, as well as now a remedy against the vicissitudes of fortune and the necessary preparation, in the form of the Eucharist, for the Angel of Judgment. The World card can now be Fame of a worldly sort, and Fortitude is necessary in meeting Death. Prudence is a virtue governing the Victory Chariot and Emperors. Old men, as the most experienced, should be in charge of justice in the state. If desired, the final two can be assigned rows 3 and 2: then the Angel will be associated with Death as that which triumphs over it, and the World as the reward for Prudence.
Milan also has a version with the three theological virtues. If one card of the previous deck is removed, there will be 16, a full 4x4. If two more cards are added to each of the regular suits, they will have the same as in the suit of triumphs. We get:
Type C: Cary-Yale, 16 triumphs
16 Angel, 12 Hope, 8 Old Man,
4 Justice, King of
Swords
15 Fame,
11 Temperance, 7 Wheel, 3 Love, King of
Cups
14 Charity, 10,
Death, 6 Fortitude, 2 Emperor, King of
Batons
13 Faith, 9
Prudence, 5 Chariot, 1 Empress, King of
Coins
This order also nicely fits Huck's chess analogy (
http://a-tarot.eu/pdf/cy-jpg.jpg).
I turn to the B order. In it there are two spaces separating all the virtues, as opposed to just two. Also, World comes after Judgment, with the principle used in the Judgment, justice, in between. Justice will have to be in the bottom row, as it works out, in order to have a virtue in each row. The result is:
Type B: Ferrara-Venice, 14 triumphs
Row 4: --------, 12 Angel, 8 Wheel, 4
Temperance, King of Cups
Row 3: 14 World, 11 Death,
7 Fortitude, 3 Pope, King of Batons
Row 2: --------,
10 Prudence, 6 Chariot, 2 Emperor, King of Coins
Row 1:
13 Justice, 9 Old Man, 5 Love, 1 Empress, King of Swords
The association of Justice, Love, and the Empress would satisfy Niccolo III in Ferrara as much as Filippo in Milan: it serves to remind women not to go outside the bounds of marriage for love, even if their husbands do. Both rulers executed their wives for adultery. Since it is also in a poem with the B order that Imperiali inserted the term Prudence, I suspect that Ferrara is where the change happened. Why is more speculative: I have suggested a concern about plots, a Hanged Man being a more vivid reminder of the consequences than a lady with a mirror.
There is also something else that would make the replacement especially appropriate, if the Hanged Man had the number 12, traditionally associated with Judas, making Death 13, the same as the seat of the "siege perilous" of the Arthurian romances, the death seat mentioned in particular in one manuscript, called the Perceval, currently preserved in Modena, an Estense city (Hopper,
Medieval number symbolism, p. 132). To accomplish this act of numerology, all that has to happen is to include a Popess and one more card. The addition causes the least disturbance if it is at the beginning, and a sleight of hand artist, called by the name of his trade,
bagatella, will also remind people that he is the "lowest of all" in the hierarchy, as the
Sermo de Ludo called him. In life, too, he is a rather scurrilous character, who cheats people in the piazzas with his tricks and the worthless tonics. This term, with the odd feminine ending, is seen only in Ferrara. In Florence and Milan it was
bagattello, which seems like a deliberate change, as with an -o the double meaning is lost, or at least more remote. A bagattello otherwise was an open carriage (
Grande Dizionario della lingua italiano, online).
Type B, Ferrara-Venice, 16 triumphs
Row 4: 16 World, 12 Hanged Man/
Prudence, 8 Chariot, 4 Popess , King of
Coins
Row 3:
15 Justice, 11Old Man, 7 Amore, 3 Emperor, King of
Swords
Row 2: 14 Angel, 10 Ruota,
6 Temperance, 2 Empress, King of
Cups
Row 1: 13 Morte,
9 Fortezza, 5 Papa, 1 Bagatella, King of
Batons
So now there are 16. As in the Cary-Yale, every place in the grid is taken. We may imagine the same substitution of Hanged Man for Prudence now happening in Milan, since its Prudence is right before Death, too. It is easy enough in Florence and Bologna to put him in the same place.
However, the report of 70 card decks in Ferrara is in 1457, rather late to suppose that they had no Bagatella. But the boys may have preferred a deck from their past. On the other hand, there could have been a version without any virtue cards at all, but with the addition of Fame, as Huck has suggested. The suits themselves can be identified with the four virtues. To remind people what suit Fame goes with, the card is simply Justice with a young man on a white horse in the background, as we see in the PMB “first artist” cards, of which there are precisely 14:
Type B, 14 cards of PMB “first artist”
Row 4: 13 Angel, 9 Old Man (Time), 5 Pope, King of Cups
Row 3: 12 Fame (former
Justice), 8 Wheel, 4 Popess, King of
Swords
Row 2: 11 Death, 7 Chariot, 3 Emperor, King of
Batons
Row 1: 10 Hanged Man (former
Prudence), 6 Love, 2 Empress, King of
Coins
Below 1: 0 Fool, 1 Bagatella
Time is overcome by the Angel, who brings Just Glory despite the vicissitudes of Fortune. The Emperor’s worldly triumphs are triumphed over by Death. And those who love an Empress need to think before they act. In this game the King functions as the virtue card. The Fool can either be the lowest Triumph or serve as a wild card in combinations.
But without all four virtues, the correlations between triumphs on the one hand and suits and virtues on the other are weakened. We can expect that as the vertical associations take on more of the associations between virtues and Petrarchans, the horizontal associations simply stop being used. Such a situation frees up the sequence to add more cards without any concern about how they fit into a grid.
A problem with stopping at 16 is the sudden jump from Death to the Last Judgment. Petrarch had two steps between the two. The Cary-Yale had the theological virtues, but the tarocchi does not go that way. In the medieval cosmograph, between the earth and the angels came air, fire, and the heavens. Likewise Dante’s journey went from hell to purgatory and then the celestial spheres. There was also the Apocalypse preceding the Judgment, with devils, fire and hail, and the appearance of both the Virgin, symbolized by Diana’s moon at her feet and her crown of stars, and her son, symbolized by the all-seeing sun. All three scenarios can be accommodated by five more cards, inserted before the final two or three. The celestials also serve to put Petrarch's cosmic time back into the series.
Finally, with the loss of the rows of a grid, the point-scoring combinations will occur in a vertical direction, at the beginning and end of the sequence. To make the acquisition of such sequences easier, the Fool can be a wild card, inserted as needed in sequences, and perhaps also the Bagatella, as in the earliest rules of Bologna. From such a role as a substitute in combinations it is easy to make the Fool serve as a substitute in the trick-taking part of the game as well.
There is then is a certain motivation to attain 22 and stop. The text of Origen's mystical explanation of the sacred number 22 had finally reached the West, one of those brought by Bessarion. Before then, the Church’s correlation between books of the Hebrew bible and their 22 letters had been known, sometimes even with an attribution to Origen, but without any indication of the hand of God being involved. At that time, in the second half of the 15th century, moreover, Origen was finally becoming of interest as someone worth studying, e.g. in Pico, 1487 (900 Theses, Oration), even if he had made heretical statements.
If the scoring of horizontal combinations disappears without a trace, the question arises of why postulate such intermediaries between Marziano and the game as later known at all? My answer is that new things do not appear out of nothing, but emerge from new combinations of old things to which more new things are added, and from which over time old things are discarded. Otherwise, the grid can explain why the Wheel of Fortune would have been added to the Petrarchan 6, although not to the exclusion of other explanation. For starting at 14, there are the two references in Ferrara and the number of first artist cards in the PMB. There are the three natural groups of subjects that add up to 14. There is the fact that most of them (excepting only the Pope and Death, which are natural dividing points) do not keep to the same place in the order among the various sources, whereas six of the seven (excepting only the Wheel) are in the same place everywhere. There are also the ways in which the virtues are distributed in the three regions, in a repeating pattern if just those fourteen are in the series. The variations nonetheless make sense in a 4 by something grid defined by the four virtues, expandable to 16 or a few more.. None of this is proof, just grounds for a reasonable hypothesis. Perhaps more evidence will be found, but at least this much is worthy of note.