Despite the uncertainty about the PMB, which I doubt will go away, I think that Nathaniel's 14-8 hypothesis is worth discussing now, apart from the composition of that deck. It overlaps with ideas that I have been promoting in several ways for several years, in that it postulates three basic components, namely imperatori, virtues, and Petrarchans, as well as the transformation of the theologicals into the celestials. The main difference is in how much of the various components - specific cards and their order - of each when. So I absolutely love this discussion, Nathaniel, for its potential to achieve greater clarity, given our common assumptions.

Let's see...

You start with an original order of:

Love, 4 cardinal virtues (in some order), First Chariot (Chastity), Death, Fame (Second Chariot), Time, Faith, Hope, Charity, First Eternity (Angel), Second Eternity (World).

A. One thing I like about this idea is that it gives an explanation for why, if Petrarch's poem was an influence, there are no cards called Eternity: it is because two cards fit that description.

That explanation won't work for Chastity and Fame, the two other Petrarchan triumphs that didn't become titles of cards. In fact, it would seem that "Chariot" would be undesirable for precisely that reason: two cards would fit that description. But would there have been two such cards in the same deck, both with females on them, both with golden discs, the only difference being that one had a sword and a golden disc and the other a baton and a golden, round jousting shield?

Among the two early Lombard cards, the Issy and the CY, one other difference was that Fame had four female attendants, whereas Pudicizia had one male groom. But historically male grooms were also associated with Fame, and flying putti attended her at her own level. It is still not easy to recognize which is Fame and which is Chastity. On the other hand, clearly the two cards, Issy and CY, come from different decks. If they are so similar that one has to be eliminated, why suppose the existence of two in the first place?

The problem is that Fame was, before the game Trionfi, always shown on a chariot. So she has to have one here. But Pudicizia, in the Cary-Yale, has the chariot. And Fame doesn't go in the same place in Petrarch's order as Pudicizia. So there is a dilemma, resolved in that rather difficult way you propose. But you don't mind, because in that way you get 7 Petrarchans to match 7 virtues. That doesn't remove the difficulty; it just transfers it to your ur-tarot as a whole.

Yes, there were two cards with chariots, one for Fame and one for Pudicizia (Petrarch's actual title, even if some manuscripts did put "Castita": chastity was one of her attendants): but they are in different decks. Hence the name "Chariot," applying to them both, one title but slightly different interpretations, referring to different Petrarchans in different decks: Pudicizia in the CY, Worldly Fame in other decks. The PMB neatly combines the two concepts: Fame for Pudicizia. It may well be that the Issy does the same. That is not even anti-Petrarchan: Petrarch did want to make Laura's Pudicizia famous. And perhaps, so as to make things less confusing to the players, concerned about order more than Petrarch, the two had the same place in the order, with Fame on a chariot where Pudicizia should have been.

About Fame having to be female. It seems to me that there are enough attributes of Fame in the Catania Chariot card to make the switch in gender while keeping the same allegory: Boccaccio had her with sword, golden apple, and chariot

…she sat on a triumphal chariot…held in her hand a shining sword …. in her left hand a golden apple…over the lady …was a verse written … ‘I am the Glory of the Worldly folk’” (Amorosa Visione VI:49-75, Hollander trans.).

That is what we see in the Catania as much as in the Issy. The Charles VI merely exchanges the sword for the halberd, a more plebian weapon. The globe, albeit with a cross on it, is also in the Rosenwald and the Rothschild sheet. It conveys fame - across all three continents, and virtuously earned - as much as dominion.

I think that the reason for removing a card for Pudicizia in most decks was that there were already Temperance and Fortitude, which were close enough in meaning to Pudicizia that the latter would be overkill. So the cardinal virtues go where Pudicizia was, allowing the Chariot to be reinterpreted as Worldly Fame, sooner or later with a male on top, except in Minchiate, where the lady, naked except for a banner, clearly is not Pudicizia (which meant proper behavior, including dress, in matters relating to sex).

Which was first to be on the chariot? It requires some thought to realize that you don't need a special card to represent Petrarch's Pudicizia, a reason for the Chariot to have been originally Pudicizia and the World originally Fame. But the original designer might have already thought beyond Petrarch, and decided to put first Fame and then Time before instead of after Death, Fame now being the Chariot. I know of no relevant literary work in which Pudicizia gets a chariot; Worldly Fame, however, is given one by Boccaccio. Literary works had more diffusion than paintings.

We end up not being able to say which was in the ur-tarot. Well, maybe that's the way it has to be.

There are also, in most decks, two Eternities, as you say. One might also be Eternal Fame, but in most decks called World, perhaps because it could be confused with the other Fame, now called Chariot to be doubly sure there is no confusion. That World was associated with Fame is indicated by her polygonal halo, which can be seen on Pesellino's Triumph of Fame. Polygonal halos weren't only for virtues; for example, there is an Adoration of the Magi illumination where the Magi wear them (https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b ... f590.item/). It is true that in this deck it is only virtues that wear one. And yes, that suggests a desire to have all four virtues in this deck. That does not exclude Eternal Fame. As I already mentioned, she matches feature for feature the guide in Boccaccio's Amorosa Visione:

...her blonde head / adorned by a crown more splendid / and fair than the sun / her comely / clothing seemed to me to be of violet hue. / Smiling, she had in her right hand / a royal sceptre, enclosed in her left / she held up a beautiful golden apple. (I.36-42)

It is a nice thing about the title "World" that it allows for more than one interpretation, in this case, a spirit-guide for one tempted by worldly fame, another type of Fama, that of Eternal Glory, yet earned (at least in part, if Purgatory counts as earning) in this world.

So even with only one Chariot per deck, there are still 6 Petrarchans. But you, Nathaniel, require 7. Well, there is the Wheel of Fortune, which in your mind did "replace" Fame eventually. It is not in Petrarch, but to my mind it is a natural extension of his 6: like Desire, Death, Time, and Judgment, she is an unavoidable facts of life. And she isn't Fame, of either type.

There is also another move you could have made. With a game called "Imperatori" around, why can't at least one of the 14 be an imperator? The problem now is that doing so gets in the way of there being 8 Imperatori to add later. Well, perhaps Fortuna is an imperator, too, as much as the Devil. If it was not in Karnoffel, that would make 9 imperatori, the 9th an extension of the older game. Even if it wasn't one of those in Karnoffel, it was prominent enough in the culture. So there are two solutions, even if we don't know which of these choices would have been made first. I expect you don't like that solution either, but it gets you out of the difficulty of how to get 14 from 7 + 6.

Then, too, you would not have the awkwardness of going from 14 to 22 while still having to add two more cards, the Wheel and the Tower (it's not really 14 + 8; it's 14 - 2 + 8 +2). You have only to add the Tower, and since you have removed Prudence, it all works out. It can even replace Prudence in the order, if it was earlier with the Theologicals rather than the Cardinals, if now it occurs just before the Celestials, which replaced the Theologicals. Disasters from God lead the believer away from the Devil and toward a re-embracing of one's Faith.

B. In any case, you have 7 + 7 =14. Next problem: the order is rather difficult to remember, you say, and I agree.

Here it is again (I at least have trouble remembering it): Love, the 4 cardinal virtues (in some order), Chariot 1 (Pudicizia), Death, Chariot 2 (Fame), Time, Faith, Hope, Charity, Eternity 1, Eternity 2.

You say this is rather hard to remember, compared to the reordering that came later.

It does not seem to me that remembering the order of Petrarchans is any less difficult than remembering the order of cards with attributes corresponding to those six triumphs in the existing orders. Petrarch's order is quite logical.

Likewise, remembering the order of the cardinal virtues, whatever it was, isn't any harder to remember there than in any existing order, except that there are now three.

Remembering the theologicals' order is in fact easier in your proposed ur-order than it is in the one existing order we have, namely Minchiate, because Hope in the quotation from St. Paul that everyone knew isn't first, as it is in Minchiate.

What is difficult in your ur-order is that the cardinal virtues go in one place, not before or after the Petrarchans, but after just the first Petrarchan; then the theological virtues go in another, not after the cardinals but before the last two Petrarchans. Since both sets of virtues have to be practiced in our world in order to attain the goal of Heaven, they logically should go before Death. So I ask, in the ur-order, if four are in a row, why not seven?

The only evidence for the Theologicals is the Cary-Yale, an eccentric deck, where we have no idea where the theologicals were placed in the order, and Minchiate later, also eccentric, but at least with numbers on the cards. How far back does Minchiate go? To me it is undetermined, because it may have evolved from a smaller deck to a larger, just like Tarocchi. In that sense, the CY could have been a Minchiate. That Germini and Minchiate were the same game is indicated by the mid-16th century Florentine poem about street prostitutes, clearly calling the game "Germini" (it is on Andrea's site) with Minchiate's triumphs, and Berni's 1526 reference, in his comment on Minchiate, to the zodiac:

. . . the proper face of Tarocco, for one pleased with this game, is that Tarocco means [literally, wants to say nothing other than] stupid, foolish, simple, fit only to be used by Bakers, Cobblers, and the vulgar, to play at most the fourth part of a Carlino [a coin], at tarocchi, or at triumphs, or any Sminchiate whatever, which in every way signifies only foolery [minchioneria] and idleness, feasting the eye with the Sun, and the Moon, and the twelve [signs], as children do. (trans. Singer, Researches into the History of Playing Cards, p. 28, in Google Books.)

The problem then is how to account for the Theologicals' switch to later in the deck. Well, it is simple. The cards that are in Minchiate only are given their own section, for the convenience of players of both games (which surely existed simultaneously). That is why Prudence is where it is. But why should they need separating at all? Well, they have to do with Eternity, as does Prudence, I think you say. I am not convinced, since they are virtues that must be practiced before death, if they are to count in eternity. But in any case they are harder to remember where they go if they are separated off.

The series is also easier to remember if the theologicals aren't there at all for a while, or at least not in their later place. But which has fewer difficulties? Let me compare ur-Tarots, yours (in either formulation, all 7 together or 4 in one place and 3 in the other) and mine.

C. My alternative is not new, just restated without my supposed Marziano grid, which is unnecessary for this purpose (in fact, unnecessary in general: it just works well with what I am about to say). I have formulated a series of reasons - nine or ten - for why it is preferable to yours, and with more arguments. Since many of them have to do with the relationship to Imperatori, and we know little about that game, much is speculative. However, my arguments avoid the difficulties I've presented of Nathaniel's origin story, and I think the difficulties of Nathaniel's conception of Imperatori. Some of my arguments I've given before and some are new.

Stage -1. The Game of Imperatori (I will capitalize the names of games): 4 Emperors plus 4 seconds-in-command, each matched with a suit. No other order necessary. (For my postulated game of Imperatori, see viewtopic.php?p=24950#p24950.)

Stage 0. Four papi (i.e., 2 seculars and 2 spirituals), no order; and higher than them, the four cardinal virtues, no order. Same game, four different cards. Allegorically, shows the primacy of the virtues over everyone. Not an actual game for selling or renting, just a developmental stage, like of a child in the womb.

Stage 1. Four papi, no order; four cardinal virtues, hierarchical; six Petrarchans, hierarchical. There is really no reason to have Love before the virtues. Love needs the virtues not to be destructive. This is the 14 card ur-tarot. Still perhaps not an actual game people pay money for.

Stage 2. Altering Petrarch and the order: Four papi, no order; Love, Virtue (in four hierarchical expressions, substituting for Pudicizia), then Worldly Fame/Achievement (accomplished before death), Time (of an individual life), Death, Eternal Fame, Eternity (as end of Time).

This is the Bolognese order for just those cards. If you are bothered by the Last Judgment being last, feel free to reverse them. Eternal Fame is exemplified in the Catania and Charles VI decks by the World card, who in the latter even has the polygonal halo often seen on Fame in the Petrarch illustrations, and fits the Boccaccio's description of the guide in Amorosa Visione. Angels took one to heaven, and in classical times Mercury. Jesus in triumph might have counted as well. In Minchiate the Angel card became Eternal Fame.

Why would anyone have wanted to change Petrarch's order, stage 1, into something it's not, stage 2? Well, it strikes me that the new order might have been influenced by the "stages of life" motif, which had various numbers of stages. Wikipedia says that the most popular number was three or four. Seven was also popular, and Wikipedia shows a 1482 German illustration with ten, the last being a skeleton in a coffin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_world%27s_a_stage). For three, there was Aristotle in De Iuventute et Senectute

Youth is the period of the growth of the primary organ of refrigeration, old age of its decay, while the intervening time is the prime of life (De Iuv. 479a 31-32, trans. Ross).

The "organ of refrigeration" is the lungs, whose function, Aristotle thought, was to cool the body (see https://journals.openedition.org/etudesanciennes/1040, where I get the quote from Aristotle). These nicely correspond to Love, the Chariot, and Time, now called the Old Man.

The problem about my stage 1 being an actual game, in the sense of enough people spending money to play it, is that once it is played, to get to stage 2 the order must be changed a lot, and players don't like that. But it might have been a "limited audience" experiment as stage 1, with people of nimble minds, then adapted to stage 2 for broader use. There could even be a deck that fit either order, perhaps the Issy.

Stage 2 is as easy to remember as stage 1, for people who aren't attached to Petrarch's order. Turning the Chariot into Worldly Fame before death serves a political point: that serving society, in war or other achievements, brings the reward of fame, or at least a good reputation, which in itself reflects virtue, and can be enjoyed in one's own lifetime as well as outliving one. Putting Time before Death makes it more relevant to the individual life, reminding us that we only have so much of it.

Stage 3. The 4 papi get put into a hierarchy, as in the Rosenwald and maybe Florence. A natural tendency.

Stage 4. Then, or as an alternative to 4 papi, somebody thinks the theological virtues should be included, and there should be only one spiritual papa, placed over the imperials. So the theologicals go where they go, for 16 or 17 cards: 16 if one imperator is eliminated. Or 14 cards, with just one imperator. So a proto-Minchiate is born.

Stage 5. The game goes to Milan, from either Bologna or Florence (or back to Milan, if stage 1 was played there experimentally), where the wheel is added, and the order changed (OK there, because most people haven't played the game), for 14 cards, and the theologicals added and the Pope removed, for the 16 card game. The 16 card game, at least, puts the Chariot as Pudicizia and has the World card as simply Fame, whether worldly or eternal. I tend to think that the game went to Milan before the papi were put into a hierarchy, because it explains why they aren't in Piedmont, even though the virtues there are in the Lombard order.

Now we are at the BB and CY. We know that the Brera-Brambilla had the Wheel. It also had 14 cards per suit. So it might well have had 6 Petrarchans, 4 virtues, and 3 Imperatori besides, on the principle of the same number of triumphs as cards in a regular suit. Or 4 Imperatori and 3 virtues, although I don't think so, because the CY had all 7. The virtues could be reduced to just the 4 cardinals, but not likely from 7 to 3.

There is room for both Time and the Wheel in the BB if there are 3 papi and no theologicals. There is also room for Time in the CY, because that deck would have had at least 16 triumphs, on the same principle as the proto-Minchiate, also that of Marziano's 16. (Here I am responding to Phaeded, who seems to insist that the CY, even with an extra 2 cards per suit, would nonetheless have had 14 triumphs.) With 16, the CY would have had just 2 papi.

I see no reason why the latter principle would not have held in Florence, for decks with 7 virtues, i.e., 16 triumphs (3 papi, 7 virtues, 6 Petrarchans): the same number as the CY, perhaps with the Pope instead of the Wheel. With only 4 virtues, there would again be 14 triumphs, this time matching the number of cards per suit. There would be room for either 3 or 4 papi, depending on whether the Wheel was included.

Why not 22 (or more) in the CY? That is two questions. First, why not more than 22? It is odd that all three of the celestials would be missing. Among the fragmentary Tarocchi decks, none have both a theological and a celestial. In Minchiate the extra virtue cards go precisely where the celestials go in the tarocchi sequence. I also see a visual resemblance between CY Hope and the PMB Star, Faith and the Moon, and Charity and the Sun (assuming that the "replacement" cards look like the cards they replaced). It is likely that the one set replaced the other. Well, that would explain why not more than 22. But not yet why less than 22.

Like Nathaniel, I favor that the Wheel was not part of the original set. With 8 cards (4 papi and 4 virtues) besides the Petrarchans (as opposed to 7 if they were all virtues), it is one card too many. It is particularly likely to have been added in Lombardy because its ruling family, the Visconti, had a large fresco of one in their castle on Lake Maggiori. For why the Wheel was added, we can say: Visconti preference or superstition. You don't want to offend Fortuna. Alternatively, a Marziano-type grid requires it if there is to be a virtue in every suit-extension.

So now I want to present arguments, at this stage of 14 for why the four other "imperatori" of Nathaniel's (Fool, Devil, Pope, Emperor) wouldn't have been added as part of a later group of 8.

First, yours is somewhat more difficult to remember, because it seems rather arbitrary that 6 of the imperatori would come before Love and then 1 just before Death and then 1 just after. If each of the later 4 has a particular feature that tells players where it goes, and not added all at once, it is easier. The Bagatella is the little one, so first; the Fool (in this resembling the infant) is not a regular part of society; the Hanged Man is on the point of death; and the Devil part of a different sequence, going from poor, deceptive light to maximal light, or from the center to the periphery, easier to remember as part of that sequence. And of course there is the problem of remembering where the theologicals go.

Second, if Imperatori and Trionfi had two separate artists dedicated to them in Ferrara, one for each game, I cannot see that the cards of Imperatori were merely a subset of the Tarocchi. I do not exclude that one or two of Tarocchi's trumps were taken from Karnoffel, i.e. the Emperor and maybe the Pope. But more important would be the idea of trumps, and perhaps even two types of trumps, full and partial, with approximately four of each. (As partial trumps, the second in command in each suit would not only not be able to overcome the first in command of any suit, but perhaps also the Kings, for example.)

A third reason for thinking the "bad" imperatori of Trionfi and Karnoffel (Devil etc.) wouldn't have been there at first - and this applies to the game of Imperatori as well as Trionfi - is that in a sense making them trumps put them above the rest of society, even kings, which is kind of a strange status for a madman, a street hustler, and a traitor. And the Devil, while a mighty power, is low in status, as low as you can get, literally so in Dante. So a card maker who made them trumps is thereby risking the wrath of the ruler, especially Filippo but also other hereditary rulers (or, in Florence, the nobly rich). Once the game is established and popular, it is easier to add such cards.

If there were any "bad" imperatori in the game of Imperatori, they would have been the heads of "bad" empires, i.e. oriental or Muslim ones. (I have described how I see Imperatori at viewtopic.php?p=24950#p24950.) Such empires are reality.

I take more and more seriously the idea that the game of Imperatori did not rank its imperatori except as first and second in each suit, and, when an imperatore was led, decided the winner by the one last played, among those of the same rank, and the higher rank if they were different. In the same spirit, if they were ranked at all, it would have been in a way that the sum of their ranks would have been equal. (So, with four papi divided among two empires, spiritual and secular, it would not be 1Empress, 2Emperor, 3Popess, 4Pope, because this gives the spiritual a sum of 7 and the secular a sum of 3. But the Rosenwald ranking 1Popess, 2Empress, 3Emperor, 4Pope passes: both spiritual and secular have the sum 5.)

Literally speaking, there are only 2 imperatori, the Empress and Emperor, so a deck like the Cary-Yale could have gotten away with just them. In Guelf Florence, there is a good allegorical reason for adding the Pope, to assert his authority over both. There are also good allegorical interpretations of 4 imperatori. One is pope, antipope, emperor or emperor-elect approved by the pope, excommunicated emperor. Another is Pope plus Emperor in Rome, Patriarch plus Emperor in Constantinople.

A fourth reason for thinking that it was only 4 imperatori at first (in Tarocchi), the "good" ones, is my principle that in general, the more variation there is in the placement of a subject in the order, the more likely it is to be early rather than late, the only exceptions being those at the divide between the sections that seem to have been respected (as Dummett discovered), i.e. the Pope as the highest of the 4 imperatori, and Death as the dividing line between the here and now and the far away, in space or time. The reason for this is that earlier the centers were more interested in asserting themselves against their enemies, tending toward differentiation, but with the Peace of Lodi in 1453 they were more interested in cooperation for mutual benefit, which tends toward standardization. (I do not accept Dummett's argument that the different centers did not know other centers' order: interaction was not so meager that it would have been hard to find it out.) The Popess, Emperor, and Empress are in all sorts of variations. But the Fool, the Bagatella, the Hanged Man, and the Devil are always have the same place in the order, in the sense of what is before and after (or not, in the case of the Fool). So these "bad" imperatori would come later.

This criterion of greater disarray meaning earlier, except for natural dividing points between Dummett's three sections, also applies to the virtues. The cardinals are extremely variable, but not the theological virtues, nor the celestials, if indeed they succeeded the theologicals in some decks (that prudence is with them can be explained by a later desire to put the special cards of that deck all together, flanked on both sides by those of Tarocchi). That they are all together, as opposed to with the cardinals, suggests that they were added in a separate operation. So that is a fifth argument.

A problem for my criterion is that Time is inevitably, in the orders, immediately before the Hanged Man, whereas the Wheel is somewhat variable. It seems to me that it is the Chariot that is variable rather than the Wheel. But in general, the order of the Petrarchans does not change, such is the power of Petrarch's sequence as modified by "stages of life"; the only exception is the last two, and that is because, as Nathaniel says, there are two cards for Eternity, or as I add, everywhere except the CY and, more ambiguously, other type C decks, Fame having moved to the Chariot. In any case, Nathaniel and I are in agreement that the Petrarchans were in the Tarot from the beginning.

Another argument: with 4 imperatori, there is a nice symmetry with 4 virtues. That is not an argument for preferring my account, since Nathaniel's also has its 7-7 symmetry, so I won't give it a number. But the game of Imperatori could be played with that combination 4 + 4. It is an easy transition. I give that as my sixth argument.

A seventh argument is that with imperatori from the beginning, there is room for flexibility. A deck with 1 imperator is fine (with all 7 virtues), and likewise with 2 and 3, depending on how many are needed to add up to the desired number, the same as the number of cards per suit, or the number of trump-like cards in Marziano's game.

For just the 4 cardinal virtues at first, as opposed to the 7, an eighth argument is that they go with 4 suits (like 4 papi): the 4 virtues take the place of the 4 "bads" and speak of higher things than imperatori. The attributes for the cardinal virtues have distinctive correspondences to the four suit-signs: cups for Temperance, swords for Justice, sticks and stick-like columns for Fortitude, and round objects, mirrors, for Coins. Such correspondences are found in the two sources that Moakley found: a funeral oration for Giangaleazzo Visconti and a "game of the king" devised by Innocenzio Ringhieri. This isn't true of the theologicals.

Finally, here is something that is more of a perspective than an argument, but I will give it anyway. People who would have played the game, like Brunelleschi, also wrote sonnets to each other, and not love sonnets either (see my post at viewtopic.php?p=24966#p24966). Sonnets have the structure ABAB ABAB CDC DCD. 4 + 4 + 3 + 3: the same as 4 imperatori, 4 virtues, 3 good Petrarchans, 3 bad Petrarchans (or, 3 in life, 3 after life). Also, the ABs are 8 lines, the CDs 6 lines: 8 of imperatori, 6 of Petrarch. Constructing a sonnet with the right rhyme-words is like playing your triumphs properly in the game. For more on this, see my recent post at viewtopic.php?p=24974#p24974.

Stage 6. The Bagatella is added to the series, as 1st, and Prudence, thereby become 12th in the order, is changed to the Hanged Man, for 16 in the Tarocchi.

The Bagatella is likely to have been added in Ferrara, because only the spelling "bagatella" has the precise double meaning needed, between "trifle" and "prestidigitator", a spelling that pre-existed the game. This is in spite of the incredible awkwardness, grammatically, of the Steele Sermon's "El Bagatella": masculine article, feminine ending. In Florence and Lombardy, by the 16th century, the spelling was "bagatello." It mostly remained "bagatella" in Ferrara. With that double meaning, it is then easy to remember that the man with the cups and balls is first, because his title means "little thing," while also not nothing, which the Fool will be, in trick-taking.

In all these places adding the Bagatella (or -o) would make the Hanged Man 12th in the order, assuming 4 papi in both Ferrara and Lombardy and 3 in Florence. 12 is important because it is the number associated with the Hanged Man in the gospels, an association likely well known in the culture, judging by the story about the Hanged Man poster against Muzio "Sforza" Attendola, for his "XII treasons," etc. Yes, 13 was the number of the "siege perilous" at the Round Table, associated with both Judas and Jesus, differently in different places. What is common to Judas and Jesus is their untimely Death in those stories, and that is card 13. But neither Death nor Judas, must have been well known associations, at least in Italy, if a wedding banquet attended by Ginevra Sforza in 1475 could have 13 at the head table. In that context an association with Jesus as 13th at the Last Supper is possible, with perhaps also the idea of self-sacrifice for the good of one's people.

To justify the Hanged Man at 13 you perhaps appeal to the ordinal numbering of the Rosenwald and Bolognese sequences, also in Florence if there were four papi. But there is no number on the Rosenwald Hanged Man. Why so, unless the person doing the numbering realized that the Hanged Man, like that of Death, wouldn't get his customary XII? As for the Bolognese order, it seems to me that when numbers were put on the cards around 1700, at the time double-headed cards were introduced, it may have been done precisely so that the numbers would correspond to those of Minchiate, a deck we know was made in Bologna as well as Florence. Or the card may have already been associated with 12, and 13 with Death.

For Florence, if there were once four papi, there are two possibilities besides what you propose: either the Bagatella wasn't there before the Hanged Man was added, or else he was deliberately skipped so as to make the Hanged Man 12 and Death 13. In my view the former is more likely, because of his name in Minchiate: he is "Papa 1." Why such a name unless there were originally 4 papi? Since the game awarded extra points for combinations of 4 papi, he replaced the Popess at the time the Hanged Man was added. (There is also the question of why Love was papa 5, but my explanation would take us too far afield.) Either seems at least as likely as what you propose.

I know that Nathaniel does not consider the PMB to have been originally a 14 card deck, but let us take it into account as well. If the PMB 14 corresponded to a card sequence in Ferrara then, the Hanged Man could have been at most 12th and Death 13th, since the Angel was surely at or near the end of the supposed 14. Being before Death, the Hanged Man could not have been 13. If there was such a 14 card deck in Ferrara, let me emphasize, I think it would have coexisted with other versions with more than one virtue in them. There were four virtues in the CY, and even if the PMB Justice card was "really" Fame, it is also a variation on the standard image of Justice invariably represented as such elsewhere. (I will say more about how the PMB 14 fit in a Ferrarese/Venetian context in a moment.)

In any case, there is a pattern in the B order, regarding the 4 virtues, if the 5 cards from Devil to Sun are not yet there:

B order: . . . Temperance, Love, Chariot, Fortitude, Wheel, Time, Hanged Man (Prudence originally?), Death, Angel, Justice,[/b] World.

The pattern starts out with the second virtue two cards further than the first one. But then we would expect Prudence instead of the Hanged Man. If that card originally was Prudence, the pattern is saved. That the Hanged Man substituted for Prudence is also suggested by Imperiali's "Risponsa" to Lollio's "Invettiva", putting "prudence" where "hanged man" should go. Descending from the World and then Justice, the highest cards in Ferrara, the poem arrives at Death, after which we would expect the Hanged Man. But instead we see:

Then comes Death, and takes another dance,
And prudence, and malice below,
And each one appears on the scales.
But the wise old man beats Fortune…
(Translation and original in Andrea Vitali's online essay "The Hanged Man and Prudence").

What is written is prudenza, yet the Hanged Man is also suggested: the “dance” would seem to be on the gallows. We should not suppose that “scales” indicates the Justice card, because that card has already been named; the scales rather are what balance prudence against malice. Piscina associated prudence with the same card, as well as the one before, saying of the latter that it signifies “a prudent counsel,” while the former is for those “that despise prudent advice" (trans. Caldwell, Depaulis, and Ponzi). All this depends on there being a Bagatella, to take advantage of the Hanged Man's numerological association.

If the five from Devil to Sun are not there (as I have given it above), the pattern in Ferrara extends even to Justice, a good reason for thinking that's the way it was, in a 16 card sequence including the World at the end. It could have been preceded by a 14 card sequence with Prudence in place of the Hanged Man, still with a virtue every third card. The PMB's 14 could then have borrowed 3 cards of the 16 (Fool, Bagatella, and Hanged Man), removed Fortitude, Temperance, and World, and changed Justice to Fame, for a virtueless sequence. If, as I hypothesize, Imperatori connected particular imperatori with particular suits, 2 to a suit, such a virtueless tarocchi might still connect triumphs to suits, 3 to a suit with 2 left over, in a Marziano-style grid. The game of Imperatori was still played in 1440s and 1450s Ferrara. It would be easy enough the play a more complicated version using tarot cards.

In the C order, the pattern of the virtues is, without the Wheel, every 2nd card a virtue:

C order: . . . Love, Justice, Chariot, Fortitude, Time, Hanged Man (Prudence?), Death, Temperance . . .

Again, the hole is where the Hanged Man is. If the Wheel were there, it would be alternating virtues and Petrarchans, except for that one card, and again, once the Bagatella was added, the Hanged Man would be 12. Since the Wheel certainly was in Milan by the time of the Brera-Brambilla, the pattern of alternating virtues and Petrarchans either was established earlier, or else for some good reason the Wheel needed to be added, even though the pattern would be broken. In the "From Marziano to the Ludus Triumphorum" thread I have suggested that the reason might have been to satisfy the requirements of a Marziano-style grid, when the theological virtues are absent.

In the popular deck of Ferrara, the pattern is maintained only if there are no cards between Death and Angel, with the fourth virtue following. That does not have to be true in either C or A. In A there can be no pattern, since the virtues are one after the other; in C the cardinal virtues stop before the part from Devil to Sun. But if those cards were absent in Ferrara, then likely the same in the C and A regions, because they, or at least A, probably had the game before Ferrara did.

Since the Devil would have broken the pattern of a cardinal virtue every third card, to the extent that the pattern of a virtue every third card in Ferrara is probable, it is improbable that the Devil was added at the same time as the rest of what Nathaniel considers imperatori. That is my last argument at this stage.

Stage 7. Then, in some region, there are five cards between Death and the two at the end. The celestials match the three theologicals; so replacing the ones with the others will eliminate one of the games, except in the A region. And along with them - maybe even earlier, because of where they are in Minchiate - the Devil and Tower are put in, too. In the Tarocchi, they make sense as filling a gap (that is how Nathaniel treats the Tower, but not the Devil.) But since they are before the theologicals in Minchiate, it might be that those two came earlier, starting in the proto-Minchiate. It is not hard to remember where they go, whether as five or as two low and three high: they make sense either way. For Piscina (where there are no Air and Fire cards) they represent the spheres of air and fire, as the two Platonic means between earth and the heavens. Towers are man-made objects known to catch lightning bolts coming from the sphere of fire. There is also the Divine Comedy, which had the Devil's Hell and the fires of Purgatory before the celestial spheres. The Mountain of Purgatory, with fire on top, is a kind of tower. There is the Book of Revelation, with its devils, lightning-toppled towers (in medieval illustrations), hailstones, and fireballs (both as in the Cary Sheet), before the woman clothed with the sun appears. In the case of Minchiate, where Prudence and the theologicals follow, it can be said that for fear of such disasters, which can come at any moment, that people should always be devout.

If these stages seem like too many, bear in mind that three or four cities are involved, each with its contribution and corresponding trace in the sixteenth century lists, and two types of decks.

I do not claim to have proven anything. I am just giving reasons for preferring some other origin story to Nathaniel's, even though his view of the tarot as a combination of virtues, Petrarchans, and imperatori, added in stages, is something I support.

mikeh wrote: 15 Jun 2022, 12:30 Between Nathaniel and Huck (I am not sure about Iolon), I don't see why both of them can't be defending "the" 5x14 theory. 5x14 has more going for it than the PMB; if so, the PMB may be part of Huck's 5x14, but there can be other 5x14 theories where it doesn't matter, and part of our job, if we are serious about 5x14, is to set them alongside one another to see which has the most going for it, apart from being the one we like.

Hm ... Nathaniel gave a clear sign, that he didn't speak of the 5x14 theory, but of a 14+8 theory. He wasn't totally clear, what he meant with this. He made a note ...

But my ideas about 5x14 actually have very little in common with Huck's. The only thing we have in common in that regard is that we both think the 70-card deck in Ferrara had a 5x14 structure. We disagree completely about why it had that structure, and what trumps it would have had.

We disagree even more about the Visconti di Modrone deck (the Cary Yale) because I think that deck must have had at least 22 trumps.

The two 5x14-decks produced in Ferrara 1457 were probably made for the visit of the 13-years-old Galeazzo Maria Sforza in Ferrara ... likely these were made to satisfy the Milanese style of play. It's not necessary to assume, that these had the Ferrarese style.

From my viewing point the essence of the 5x14-theory is the PMB-1, the 14 trumps of the first painter. It is on my side assumed, that these 14 trumps meant a complete trump set and a complete 5th suit. The 70-cards note of Ferrara and the 14 pictures for Bianca Maria of 1441 have the role of "additional evidence" for the use of a "14", not more.
Dummett, Decker and Depaulis once (A Wicked Pack of Cards) claimed, that the set of 22 trumps (or 21 trumps + Fool) was ready in 1450. The only evidence for this construction was the complete PMB with 20 trumps, formed - according the opinion of accepted art researchers - by 2 different artists, one, who worked 1451 (proved by a letter) and another, who worked considerable time later (10-30 years later according different theories).

But ....
The 2 trumps in the Brera-Brambilla deck don't prove the existence of 22 trumps (or 21 trumps + Fool)
The 11 trumps in the Cary-Yale deck don't prove the existence of 22 trumps (or 21 trumps + Fool)
The 14 pictures for Bianca Maria Visconti 1441 at Ferrara don't prove the existence of 22 trumps (or 21 trumps + Fool)
The 16 trumps in the Michelino deck don't prove the existence of 22 trumps (or 21 trumps + Fool)
The 14 trumps in PMB-1 don't prove the existence of 22 trumps (or 21 trumps + Fool)
The 14 + 6 (= 20) trumps in the complete PMB don't prove the existence of 22 trumps (or 21 trumps + Fool)
The 16 trumps in the Charles VI deck don't prove the existence of 22 trumps (or 21 trumps + Fool)
The note about two 70-card decks produced in Ferrara doesn't prove the existence of 22 trumps (or 21 trumps + Fool)
Some other smaller decks also give no secure evidence about the existence of a deck with 22 trumps (orwith 21 trumps + Fool)

The first clear evidence ....
The earliest appearance of a 22 in that, what is documented as Tarot in 15th century, we have the Tarocchi poem of Matteo Maria Boiardo, which I personally date to January 1987, but I remember to have seen datings of 1460s and 1470s without much reasoning why the authors of this ideas took these positions.
I take the date January 1487, cause an illegitime daughter of Ercole d'Est, married in this month, LUCREZIA. She married Annibale Bentivoglio from Bologna and it is recorded, tha a lot poets made poems for her at this opportunity.
The poem of the 21st and last trump (naturally the most important place in this deck) of Boiardo was ...

Fortezza d’animo in LUCREZIA liete
Exequie fece: pe purgar sua fama
Se occise, a l’offensor tese atra rete
Dando exempio a chi 'l nome e l'onore ama.

******************

There are other reasons for this date of a Tarocchi with 22 cards. One lies in the condition, that Boiardo was the cousin of Pico de Mirandola and Pico published his famous work about Kabbala in December 1486 in Rome and the number 22 had in this text a significant role. So we have this activity ...
December 1486: Pico publishes a very important work with some relations to the number 22
End of January 1487: Lucretia's wedding, Boiardo makes a poem with 22 Trionfi trumps
... there is a very short time between Pico's publication and the wedding of Lucretia.

Other notes

Der erste Hinweis auf die Anwesenheit von Juden in Scandiano erscheint in einer notariellen Urkunde vom 2. September 1478, in der ein Versprechen erwähnt wird. Die Juden wurden höchstwahrscheinlich mit der Ankunft von Matteo Maria Boiardo als Feudalherr der Stadt nach Scandiano gerufen. Am Ende des fünfzehnten Jahrhunderts geht aus notariellen Urkunden hervor, dass eine jüdische Familie, die von Bonaventura di Leuccio, in Scandiano lebte. Im Jahr 1494 erscheint die Familie von Samuel da Fano auch als Einwohner von Scandiano. Stattdessen ließen sich zu Beginn des 17. Jahrhunderts zwei Familien aus Ferrara in Scandiano nieder, die großen Einfluss auf die Gemeinde haben sollten: die Bonarroi und die Corinaldis. Die Nachkommen der Bonarroi werden bis zur zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts in Scandiano leben, die Nachkommen der Corinaldis bis 1925. Zwischen 1665 und 1667 ließ sich auch der Vorfahr einer anderen einflussreichen Familie, Abram Almansi, in Scandiano nieder. Ende 1600 lebten in Scandiano 625 Menschen, darunter 25 Juden, und ein Jahrhundert später, 1785, erreichte die skandinavische Bevölkerung 929 Einwohner, darunter 122 Juden.

https://www.loquis.com/de/loquis/166262 ... +Scandiano
automatic translation

The first reference to the presence of Jews in Scandiano appears in a notarial deed dated September 2, 1478, in which a promise is mentioned. The Jews were most likely called to Scandiano with the arrival of Matteo Maria Boiardo as feudal lord of the city. At the end of the fifteenth century, notarial deeds show that a Jewish family, that of Bonaventura di Leuccio, lived in Scandiano. In 1494, the family of Samuel da Fano also appears as residents of Scandiano. Instead, at the beginning of the 17th century, two families from Ferrara settled in Scandiano, who would have a great influence on the municipality: the Bonarroi and the Corinaldis. The descendants of the Bonarroi will live in Scandiano until the second half of the 19th century, the descendants of the Corinaldis until 1925. Between 1665 and 1667 the ancestor of another influential family, Abram Almansi, also settled in Scandiano. At the end of 1600, 625 people lived in Scandiano, including 25 Jews, and a century later, in 1785, the Scandinavian population reached 929 inhabitants, including 122 Jews.

compare also:
Storia degli ebrei di Scandiano
by Daniela Bergonzoni
Casa Editrice Giuntina, 1998
https://books.google.de/books?id=Ne59le ... o"&f=false

*************

Pico de Mirandola composed a "triunfi carte poem" at an unknown date before 1486 ....

discussion ..... posting.php?mode=edit&f=11&p=17590

Sonetto 28
Amor ben mille volte e cun mille arte,
come uom sagio che amico se dimostra,
temptato ha pormi ne la schera vostra,
che empieti de triunfi soi le carte;
ma la ragion di Lui m’era in disparte,
che la strata dil cel vera mi mostra:
così l’uno pensier cun l’altro giostra
e ‘l cor voria partir, né pur si parte.
Onde ancor né gioir nostra alma o trista
far può Fortuna, e furno in grande errore
gli ochi, se lo contrario a lor pareva.
Gelosia forse, che ‘l nostro Signore
seguir suol sempre, offerse cotal vista
al cor, che di Madonna alor temeva.

https://inpoesia.me/2011/01/22/giovanni ... e-volgari/

**************

MikeH ....

Added next day (2nd of 2 additions): What does create a problem is if the 14 surviving trumps of the PMB are construed as somehow the original or standard 14, or close to it (e.g. instead of Fortitude as the one cardinal virtue, it was Justice). That presents a problem for anybody who supposes that more than one virtue was part of the ur-tarot. My view is that if the PMB 14 were complete, the 14 triumph game using these cards would have been a variation on an earlier one of 14 - or more likely, several, with slightly different cards at different places or times - perhaps a fad of the 1450s, and perhaps just in the B region, and that games with other cards, and/or more of them, including all 3 of the usual virtues and the World, were also played then, even in Ferrara. Or perhaps that 14 have survived is just coincidence. But I am open to other views.

Well ... let's see, what we got from Pico and the Boiardo poems ....

Huck wrote,

From my viewing point the essence of the 5x14-theory is the PMB-1, the 14 trumps of the first painter. It is on my side assumed, that these 14 trumps meant a complete trump set and a complete 5th suit. The 70-cards note of Ferrara and the 14 pictures for Bianca Maria of 1441 have the role of "additional evidence" for the use of a "14", not more.

Yes, your 5x14 is different from Nathaniel's 5x14, and also from Phaeded's 5x14 and my 5x14.

As I understand yours, Huck, it is primarily that 5x14 decks existed in northern Italy in the period between 1440 and 1457. I don't know if you want to say that 5x14 was the original structure of the tarot or not. Since you say that the CY was a 5x16, perhaps you want to leave it open, I don't know. On the other hand, 14 cards per suit was usual, at least in tarot decks that we know about, so more likely 5x16 was the exception and 5x14 was the rule.

If it is true, as it very much seems to be, that the PMB was produced for a family in Venice, it may well be that the PMB and the other evidence only applies to the B region of Ferrara and Venice. Perhaps that is enough.

In my view none of the three pieces of evidence is conclusive. We cannot even say that they convey a probability that 5x14 decks were produced. They are simply reasons for making what is therefore a reasonable hypothesis. It is a stronger hypothesis than, for example, the hypothesis that playing cards entered Europe from the north, because it is fairly certain that the dates, 1-1-1440, 1450-1460, 1457, are accurate, unlike those in northern Europe for playing cards. But we can give no probability weak or strong for either - nor for any other number, including 22.

It may well be that the 14 figures were something else.

It may well be that some of the PMB original cards are lost.

It may well be that the 70 card triumph decks in 1457 were 4x12 plus 22, that is, they were without queens and tens, as Franco has argued. There is evidence for the omission of tens early on, admittedly from Spain and not Italy.

But the coincidence does count for something.

I count Phaeded and Nathaniel as having 5x14 theories, too, because they also argue for such decks. And they are quite specific that these are for the original tarot. Phaeded finds 7 virtues everywhere in Florence, in Dante, and strongly suggested in the CY, therefore also the BB; he also finds 7 other triumphal subjects in Dante. In evidence he gives the CY, which has 4 virtues, including what is usually called the World as Prudence, so probably the three others, and in addition 7 other subjects found either in the BB, the CY, or both, as well as in Dante. My argument against him is that one can find a great many things in Dante, besides what is in the BB and CY. There is nothing in the Divine Comedy that singles out those 7 non-virtues in particular as subjects. Phaeded does not think that the PMB first artist cards reflect the original composition of the tarot.

I am not clear as to what Huck thinks the original composition of the tarot was. Do the PMB first artist cards reflect it? Or could it have been something else? It would help to have that clarified, as well as an original order, if any.

Nathaniel finds the argument for 7 virtues in the ur-tarot to be persuasive, too, but thinks that 7 can be derived from Petrarch, too, allowing 2 cards with chariots on them, for Chastity and Fame, and 2 cards for Petrarch's Eternity. That is 14, and he allows Huck's evidence, too. Like Phaeded, he does not think that the PMB reflects the original composition of the tarot. But he disagrees with Phaeded about the identity of a few of the non-virtues. He does not think the Empress and Emperor were part of the original tarot, nor the Wheel, because the original stimulus was the seven virtues and Petrarch's Trionfi.

That Nathaniel adds 8 to that 14 does not negate that he admits of 14 triumph decks early on. All of you (and myself, too) acknowledge that 8 were added. And in fact, as I have said, his is not really 14 + 8. It is 14 + 1 (wheel) + 8 (imperatori) -1 (prudence). Your theory seems to me more 14 + 8 than his, in that the PMB has 14 and by 1486, in your estimation there were clearly 22, and you have no theory about what happened in between, except for a couple of 16 triumph luxury decks.

In this connection it seems to me impossible that the ChVI could have had only 16 triumphs, because the very similar Catania deck had an Empress. If so, that gives the ChVI at least 17.

My own hypothesis is yet another variation on the theme of the 5x14. I hold that the original composition was most likely 4 + 4 + 6, that is to say, 4 imperators, 4 cardinal virtues, and 6 Petrarchans. It might also have been 6 Petrarchans, 7 virtues, and 1 imperator. Or 3 imperatori, 7 virtues, and 6 Petrarchans. I do not hold that 14 was universal and exclusive at one time. I do think that there are more reasons for 14 than for other numbers, except 16 if the theological virtues were present. By Petrarchan" I mean either one of Petrarch's six or something derived from one of the six, perhaps using imagery from Boccaccio's Amorosa Visione.

It might even have been 8 triumphs to start, meaning just the cardinals and papi. I doubt if it would have been called "trionfi" then, because that name suggests Petrarch. I do not exclude 4 virtues plus 6 Petrarchans, for 10 altogether, but it does not seem as likely as 8.

My view is that the CY probably had 16 triumphs and the BB 14 (omitting the theologicals and adding one papa). As for the PMB, it might have had 14 triumphs, lacking any virtues, but there also would have been been decks composed differently, with at least 3 cardinal virtues, and probably others.

About when there were first 22, judging from the political situation, one of unity among formerly contending powers, I would guess sometime in the 1450s. It might also have been 22 from the beginning, although there are many reasons for thinking otherwise: the same reasons that favor only 4 (or fewer) imperatori and 4 rather than 7 virtues, and 6 rather than 7 Petrarchans, which also excludes the Wheel (not a Petrarchan). I gave about nine arguments on this in my previous post, many of which apply to the 22 triumph hypotheses.

Nathaniel finds the original order of some importance. Phaeded does not. I do, but not in a precise manner, because it is not clear when decks started being made commercially (I include luxury decks) as opposed to experimentally). But four papi followed by four virtues followed by six Petrarchans is the most straightforward. I am not clear on what Huck thinks about the order of the 14 PMB triumphs. On my view, it would depend on where the game was played, whether in A, B, or C region, simply taking the order there, for the 14 surviving cards.

I am very curious about whether the pigment analysis of the PMB cards showed anything interesting. I unfortunately have the bad habit (it's happened before) of unconsciously supposing that when it is 9:30 am in New York it is 12:30 pm on the west coast. Actually, when it is 12:30 pm on the west coast it is 3:30 pm on the east coast. Since the meeting ended at 2:30, when I eagerly clicked on the zoom link, it had already expired. I realized immediately what had happened.

mikeh wrote: 27 Jun 2022, 12:58 I am very curious about whether the pigment analysis of the PMB cards showed anything interesting. I unfortunately have the bad habit (it's happened before) of unconsciously supposing that when it is 9:30 am in New York it is 12:30 pm on the west coast. Actually, when it is 12:30 pm on the west coast it is 3:30 pm on the east coast. Since the meeting ended at 2:30, when I eagerly clicked on the zoom link, it had already expired. I realized immediately what had happened.

Yes, it definitely did. We found out that the golden background on the original trump and court cards is made out of an alloy of gold and silver. The background on the six added trump cards is made out of pure gold. And also the gold leaf that has been used for the symbols on the pip cards is made out of pure gold. For me this makes it evident that the pip cards were not made at the same time as the original 14 trump and 16 court cards. I discussed this on this forum, on the Facebook Tarot history group and on my website. The implications are enormous.

Hello

You have spoken about the order of virtues. Specifically, I want to comment on the theological virtues. Some time ago I found an anonymous text. I have not been able to find out the author or the title. I have the feeling that someone created that document by copying texts from the Internet, but I have not found the source. Perhaps the original text was not written in Spanish. The part that interests me is on page 20, which is the second page of the chapter on Karnöffel. There is no exact numbering on the pages, but you can count 20 pages from the first. I would put a screenshot here if I knew how it is possible to put images in this forum, preferably in a way that is accessible to any phone. The point is that the following is stated in that text. The library where the Visconti Modrone is kept (I omitted "di" because it seems unnecessary to me) had an order for the trump cards, which were placed on the four suits. This structural conception of the Visconti Modrone seems very interesting to me and I had never read anything detailed on the subject. I wrote to the library or museum where the Modrone is and they told me that they know nothing about this structural issue. The subject is interesting and I have developed a theory but it would be good to find out the author of the text and to know if you have knowledge and opinion on the subject. I think that the text may be correct although in the Museum now they are misinformed. If we locate the author of this modern text, we will be able to obtain details on the subject. I will go with what is of interest here. The theological virtues are not followed in this conception of the Modrone but separated by other triumphs but I think that they have this order: Charity, Faith, Hope. Do you know this text about Modrone structure? (page 20)

https://es.scribd.com/document/49062791 ... -Del-Tarot

Hi Magic Moon. I see that the Forum is finally available for posting, at least for now, after a severe bot attack that shut it down for a while. Hopefully I can post this brief acknowledgement of your very interesting discovery on Scribd.

The original for that rather long text - everthing after the word "BLOG", is a blog entry I wrote in 2017, my historical introduction to a long series of posts in which I interpreted the 22 special cards in terms of a variety of symbol systems familiar to educated people in Renaissance Italy, starting with the fundamental one, known to the most people, of Christianity and rulers' heraldics (i.e. the imperial eagle) of the time. The original is at http://22invocationsofdionysus.blogspot ... ction.html, under my own full name, Michael S. Howard. It in turn is a revised and expanded version of something I wrote in 2008; hence the 2008 date for the entry, but with 2017 in the text.

However, a lot of water has passed under the bridge since 2017. I have found out more things and adjusted my thinking accordingly, although I still basically agree with what I wrote then. I am working on an update for you, which I will post as soon as I am reasonably satisfied with it. In particular, I can confirm your hunch that the information you got from the librarian is wrong, in part from one of the library''s own print publications and in part from emails I have from the same library. It is possible that the Wayback Machine could allow one to go back before March of 2019, when the change was made, to see what was on the website then, but I don't know that I am computer-savvy enough to do it. So this is just to let you know that I am very interested in exchanging views on this topic.

Hello. Really, lot of problems here with the bots or with the excess of public and traffic in the forum. Yeah! I have some ideas on my mind wating since few weeks. Probably I remember this ideas about other parts in this forum THF. Thanks.

It's a surprising coincidence to discover that you (Mikeh) are the author of the mysterious and interesting anonymous text about a Modrone structure. So, the structure existed on the library's official website until 2019, when they changed the look of the page and the cards simply go in a certain order. There are several ways to reconstruct this supposed structure. I don't know to what extent this structure was detailed in the library's publication or website. It seems convenient to know the total number of trumps and the precise position of the missing cards, since this determines the structural position of many cards in the sequence. That is, this way we would know with certainty which suit (club, cup, sword, or coin) is associated with each Modrone trump. My hypothesis assumes there were 16 trumps, but I don't know if the library proposed a structure for 16 trumps or 12. The question was a bit abstract for me when I tried to reconstruct the structure with empty spaces based on your interesting text. So, I'm available for discussion and I'm looking forward to your post because you have more information than I do. Thank you very much.

Good start. The Beinecke wisely did not propose any particular number of trumps, just an order for those they had. It is classified "non-standard." I'll give you something to chew on, part one of two.

Here is how the trumps of the Visconti di Modrone were ordered and named on the Beinecke Library website before March 22, 2019. There was a series of scans of the 67 cards, each with a title/description. First came the suit cards of Swords; then “Empress of Swords,” “Emperor of Swords,” and “Love (Swords).” Then came the suit of Batons, then “Fortitude (Batons),” “Faith (Batons),” and “Hope (Batons).” Then came the suit of Cups, followed by “Charity (Cups),” Chariot (Cups),” and “Death (Cups).” And finally Coins, ending with two unnamed cards recognizable as the World and Judgment, in that order.

I know that is what I saw because I reported it to Franco Pratesi for his reaction in 2016, when it was still there, and he graciously included my summary and a few comments in a note he published on the naibi.net site, at https://naibi.net/A/502-CARYYA-Z.pdf. My comments, in English, are on pp. 13-14 (there in English). I now think the ones on p,. 14 were unnecessary. They are also published in Franco's Giochi di carte nella republica Fiorentina (Aracne, 2016), pp. 531-532. The whole note is translated at http://pratesitranslations.blogspot.com ... ti-di.html

I first noticed these titles and order in 2008. I emailed the Beinecke, and curator Timothy Young replied, “Cataloging information about the cards was received with the collection when it was given by the Cary family to Yale. The author of the printed catalog to the Cary Collection used their descriptions when he created fuller catalog records.” That seemed to imply that the order and suit attributions would have come with the cards when Yale acquired them from the Cary family. In 2016, before emailing Fanco, I emailed Young again, and he confirmed what he said earlier, but adding that he had looked further and found nothing from the Cary Family on this matter.

The reason for my interest was that these titles, connecting trumps with suits, suggested a possible similarity with another game described earlier in a treatise by Marziano of Alosio, also called Marziano da Tortona, for the same Duke of Milan as the Modrone is thought to have been made, twenty years or so earlier, which also associated groups of trumps with the four suits. Another thing was the order of the trumps, which corresponds to nothing known, although except for the theological virtues it fits minchiate. It was also strange that there were no titles for the last two trumps.

In around 2018-early 2019 I at least was able to verify that the trump order on the website predates it: William Keller’s A Catalogue of the Cary Collection of Playing Cards at Yale University, 1981, has the same order; the titles are the same, too, minus the suit assignments. That World and Judgment are included makes the lack of titles for them on the website even stranger:

The Yale University Library Gazette article referred to is online but says nothing about either the order or any suit assignments. Its bibliography, however, mentions a 1974 Yale MA thesis on the Modrone by Martha Wolff, “Bonifacio Bembo and the Minchiate cards painted for Filippo Maria Visconti.”

In March of 2019, hoping to get my questions answered, I contacted both Wolff and Keller.

Wolff replied first (March 20, 2019). She said she had not been concerned about the order (it was an art history thesis) and did not recall the cards being in any particular order, but she did not know how the cards were housed. She contacted Yale and had them make a pdf of her thesis.

There she lists the trumps twice. The first (p. 6), of the standard 21 plus the Fool, is in the “Steele Sermon” order (but Moakley's language). Moakley thought all 15th century tarots would have had that order, and Wolff follows her. In her footnotes she cites Moakley and Sylvia Mann. For some reason you have to go to the end of this post to read them.
The second list, in Appendix A, uses the Bertoni order, with the Chariot below Love, and inserts the theological virtues between Fortitude and Death. For some reason, the list repeats.(at least as I see it).
Strangely, her placement of the theologicals between Fortitude and Death is closer to Keller's, albeit in the order Charity, Hope, Faith, than to her source for minchiate, Sylvia Mann’s Collecting Playing Cards (online in archive.org): minchiate has them after Death.

So far there is nothing about suit assignments. On March 21, 2019, I received an email from Young. He had looked at how the cards were stored and found that each of four boxes contained all the extant cards of a particular suit and also those trumps which the website associated with that suit. So a cataloger or media technician somehow had the impression that those trumps belonged to the same suit. Faced with what was obviously a misunderstanding, Young removed all reference to the suit in the titles of the trumps. Over time, the order of the trumps and their alternation with suit cards has changed as well. So that's why what was there in 2019 is gone.

On March 28, Keller emailed me. He couldn’t remember precisely where he got the order, but assured me that he did not make it up and probably got it from some article by Dummett or Decker.

I thought I had read everything by those two; yet in searching the “Ask Alexander” database, I found one I had missed, Dummett’s “The Order of the Tarot Trumps (Part II),” Journal of the Playing-Card Society, 2, no. 4 (May, 1974), pp. 33-49. On p. 47, he proposes 24 trumps for the Modrone in descending order, one to a line, those extant indicated with an asterisk: (“*Angel (Judgment), *World, Sun. Moon. Star, Tower (House of the Devil), Devil, *Death, Hanged Man, Hermit (Time), Wheel of Fortune, *Chariot, *Charity, *Hope, *Faith, Justice, *Fortitude, Temperance, Prudence, *Love, Pope, *Emperor, *Empress, Bagatto.” (Asterisks indicate actually surviving cards).)

Those with asterisks are in precisely Keller’s order. The names correspond, too. Dummett does not mention the Fool, probably because it was not a trump, as he says often elsewhere.

What is Dummett's basis for this order? Despite writing a page and a half in defense of this sequence, he never gives any explanation for the order he presents: he only says why 24 instead of 21 and why Prudence but not the Popess. Yet his order certainly has a pattern: for the most part, it is the A order of Florence in its most common form, as he set out in part one of his article (in the February 1974 issue); he removes the Popess from this order, inserts the theological virtues immediately after the cardinals St. Paul’s order (as opposed to that of minchiate) and adds Prudence as the lowest of the cardinals.

So at least I knew where the order at Yale came from - Keller, who got it from Dummett. The only doubt might be whether Dummett had perhaps inquired of Yale if the trumps were in any order and unconsciously favored what he heard. But Keller surely would have remembered such an event: he was the curator at the time and in fact had an article in the same issue as Dummett’s, describing the Cary Collection. So now we have an explanation for both the order and the suit assignments.

However, I don't think the questions are resolved that easily. I will explain why the next time the bots let me use the Forum.

So now part 2. I've devoted a whole thread to this issue, with my views changing as I went. Here is what I think currently.

Young is surely right about the dubiousness of the titles on the website, as no one who has studied the cards ever thought of including a suit in the titles. But why hadn't the cataloger given a title and suit for the last two cards, which Keller had named World and Judgment and were in the same box as Coins? Also, a division into four groups of trumps, each associated with a suit, which was the basis for my interest, still remains, now from being in the same box rather than as part of the title.

The primary reason that the association of 2 or 3 trumps to each suit remains: it has only shifted from the titles of the trumps to the placement of 2 or 3 trumps in each of the four boxes in which the cards for the particular suits were placed. The parallel to Marziano's game remains.

The structure of Marziano's game can be put in the form of a grid. (This combines two of Caldwell and Ponzi's charts on pp. 10-11 of their edition and translation of the treatise, the relevant part online at https://www.google.com/books/edition/Tr ... =en&gbpv=0. However, I have added arrows and "suited by similarity to" to the boxes in one of their columns. This phrase is in the text (without the "to"), as are the relationships of the gods to the birds. I have also added heading to that column.): As you can see, 16 god cards are divided into four groups, each related to a suit.The same could be true in the Modrone, with its tarot-trump-like picture cards and the four usual Italian suits, perhaps even with the same number, 16. Michael Dummett had seen the parallel in his comments to Pratesi's article on Marziano in the previous issue of The Playing-Card. Dummett writes in the Jan.-March issue, 1990, p. 75, after first making it clear that he does not believe that the Visconti-Sforza deck originally had only 14 trumps:

We know, however, that the composition of the Visconti di Modrone pack did not conform to what later came to be standard: the hypothesis that it contained only sixteen trumps is accordingly a real possibility.

That the Modrone had 16 cards per suit also lends credibility to the idea, on the principle that the trumps would constitute a fifth suit equal in number to the others.

It is easy enough to find five trumps to add to the eleven extant trump-like extant cards of the Modrone, although we may disagree on what all of them were, and then to divide them into four groups correlated with the four suits. This is especially easy if we acknowledge that those groups at the Beinecke, taken from a purely speculative reconstruction by Dummett, are not set in stone. But there is more to Marziano's game than that. The groups of "deified heroes" are "suited by similarity" to four suits of birds and their kings. What does that mean, and how is it expressed in the game?

Marziano explained the similarity in his names for the four groups: Virtues, Riches, Virginities, Pleasures. "Virtutis" in Latin has the sense of "excellence": each of the first rows of heroes has some special excellence: Jupiter in ruling, Apollo in the arts and medicine, Mercury in trade and eloquence, Hercules in physical strength in service to the gods and man. The eagle, bird of Zeus, is the most excellent bird, in strength, courage, and vision. The next four gods have something to do with riches, and the phoenix is of the east, with all its riches (or has gold on its tail, in some accounts). The next four are all virgins, and the turtledove was famous for faithfulness to its mate. The last four represent the pleasures of the body, food, and drink. Doves were associated with Venus and thought to be promiscuous. The similarities are evident enough.

The problem is how these similarities get expressed in the game. Dummett put it this way (p. 74 of previous):

Were the gods trump cards?
.... Their assignment to suits (p.34) suggests that the gods were merely extra court cards, ranking above the Kings. Their ranking in order (p.35) suggests the contrary, that they functioned as genuine trumps. Marziano's statement (p.34) that they beat the Kings and pip cards (ranks of birds) could be read either way. If they were trumps, their assignment to the suits is pointless; if they were superior court cards, their ranking among themselves is pointless. Of the two hypotheses, Signor Pratesi's, that they were trumps in our sense, seems the more probable. But there are other possibilities: for instance, that, when a King or pip card was led, the trick could be won by a god only if it was of that suit, but that, when a god was led, it could be beaten by any higher god. If this seems complicated, we should remember that evolution sometimes goes in the direction of simplicity; we should recall also the complicated rules about the trump suit in Karnoffel. This hypothesis would make Marziano's game ancestral to Tarot, but at a considerable remove.

Dummett’s proposal, it seems to me, ignores Marziano’s stipulation that “Every one of the gods, however, will be above all [the] orders of birds and the kings of the orders,” which I think means able to win a trick even when a bird-card of a different suit is led. It only allows a god-card to win if it is of the suit led, either as the extension of the suit or as a member of the suit of gods. Marziano’s rule has no such restriction. Otherwise, however, his point is well taken.

My suggestion is to take a hint from the last sentence in the treatise (which Pratesi in 1989 didn’t quote), where Marziano says that Cupid can vanquish Jupiter. That condition will be fulfilled if, along with the rule that god-cards must (or can?) be played, if one has any, to a trick if one is out of the suit led, there is the qualification that a god in the same suit-extension as the suit led has priority over other trumps in winning the trick. So if a Dove was led, and someone out of Doves played Jupiter, someone else playing Cupid could win the trick, as long as a higher trump in that suit-extension wasn’t played, too. That is the connection to the suit.

So far, it does not matter what the precise rule was, as long as it connected the four gods in each “order” to an order of birds. For example, it could have had to do with the scoring, i.e. extra points for winning most or all of the gods in a group. That type of rule in fact existed in the Florentine and Bolognese games known later, with extra points for getting certain numbers of "papi" or the top four or five trumps at the top of the sequence (in Bologna going down from there). A similar rule existed for the court cards: getting three or more kings, for example, earned extra points.

The problem is that Marziano also had his groups "suited by similarity" to his four suits. How is that possible with the Modrone's trumps and suits? They can be divided into four groups easily enough: 4 dignitaries, 4 cardinal virtues, 3 theological virtues, 6 Petrarchans. These are unequal; nor is it clear how they are similar to suits. Or perhaps with 12 in all: 3 good Petrarchans, 3 bad Petrarchans, 3 cardinal virtues, 3 theological virtues. Or simply "group 1," "group 2," etc. But again, how are these similar to the four suits? I suppose something could be concocted ad hoc, but we are ad hoc enough already.

In fact there was a trump-suit correspondence well enough known at the time to be able to connect groups to suits. Moakley used it in her imaginary procession where foot-soldiers representing the suits alternated with floats on which were characters representing the cards.

Moakley (p. 41 and its footnote 1, online at https://moakleyupdated.blogspot.com/.) cited Innocenzo Ringhieri, in his Cento giuochi liberali et d'ingegno (Bologna 1551), p. 132, invented a card game in which Justice corresponded with Swords, Temperance with Cups, Fortitude with a suit called "Columns," and Prudence with another called "Mirrors.” What he put is below (from Google Books’ reproduction of the text; there is more, but it pertains to things like magistrates, knights, plebians, etc.). In a footnote, Moakley points out that Justice in medieval representations carried a sword; Temperance had two vessels; Fortitude was often shown with a column or staff resembling a Baton; and Prudence held a mirror, which resembles a Coin. Since in the Modrone Fortitude has no such object, the convention would have started with some other version, such as the card in Bologna.

1551 is a bit late for the Modrone, and Bologna the wrong place, but Moakley in her note also cites a reference to the same four objects in a funeral oration for Giangaleazzo Visconti, Filippo Maria Visconti's father, who died in 1402. "O chiara luce, o specchio, o colonna, o sostegno, o franca spada, the la nostra contrada mantenevi sicura in monte e in piano!" [O clear light, o mirror, o column, o support, o confident sword, you kept our territory safe in the high places and the flat! – trans. MSH] (Arch stor tomb, anno xv, p. 792).” This seems a metaphorical way of alluding to Giangaleazzo as the embodiment of the four cardinal virtues. It would be of interest to know if “clear light” refers to a suit of cards as well as a kind of intellectual vision.

In relation to these virtues and suits, it is striking that the card for Fortitude is one of the three trumps in the box containing the suit of Batons. (That the card has no column suggests that the game involved might have originated with a different image on the card.) And if there were four cards originally in the Swords box with the Empress, Emperor, and Love, Justice could have been there, too, as the card coming immediately after Love and before Fortitude in the Lombard orders of the 1540s. Although these orders are a century later than the cards, players would have preferred there not be great changes in the order. Likewise, Temperance could have been in the Cups box, following Death, leaving Prudence with Coins. These three additions to the extant eleven accord with an observation that Dummett made about the Modrone, that if four of the seven principal virtues of the Church were present, then probably the other three were as well.

Only two cards remain to make 16, one in the Prudence box and one with Fortitude. It seems to me that a case can be made for five of the six Petrarchan triumphs already: Love, Chastity (the lady on the Chariot, holding a shield in accord with Petrarch’s description), Death, Fame (the lady on the World card holding a trumpet), and Eternity (Time ends at the Last Judgment). A card for Time would complete the series, and the Vecchio, or Old Man, was sometimes given that name. Petrarch himself had made the Sun Time’s primary spokesperson; in that vein, a Milanese Triumph of Time thought to be of the 1440s shows only a young sun-god in his chariot. So the Sun is a possibility. If the five occurred in Petrarch's own order, beginning with Love and ending with Eternity, Time would go between the World and the Judgment, in the highest group. That would fit the distribution of cards in the Beinecke's boxes, too, where besides Prudence there would need to be one more trump. However, there is no particular reason to assume that the Beinecke distribution has any claim to historical existence, since it is based purely on a speculation of Dummett's in 1974.

The remaining card would be in the second group, which still needed one more card. My speculation is the Wheel, because it is a kind of seventh Petrarchan-like triumphator, presented as such in Boccaccio's Amorosa Visione, triumphing over Wisdom, Wealth, Fame, and Love. It is also one of the two surviving trumps in the Brera-Brambilla deck, of the same milieu as the Modrone. Putting it lower than the Chariot conforms to its placement in minchiate. It is true that the three theologicals intervene, but they might have been moved in the course of expanding into minchiate, putting them and Prudence, to be with the other cards unique to minchiate.

In that case, the Modrone might well be a proto-minchiate. A card game called “minchiate” is documented for 1470, and 1477, decks of “germini” for 1506, and there is an old attestation of minchiate in 1466 in a letter between Luigi Pulci and the future Magnifico; although now lost, the letter’s content seems quite believable, as other such letters are perfectly legible, Pratesi says. (See Franco Pratesi, “De l'utilité des jurons pour l'histoire du minchiate,“ As de Trefle No. 52 (1993), pp. 9-10; same author, “1499-1506: Firenze - Nuove informazioni sulle carte fiorentine,” The Playing-Card 44, no. 1, pp. 61-71, Both online at https://naibi.net, and translated in the "Old But Fundamental Essays" thread here, viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2743. There is also a satirical poem of ca. 1440 Florence using both “minchiatar” and “trionfi” a couple of lines apart, a possible double pun; see viewtopic.php?p=15174#p15174.)

With these additions, we get the following grid, which is essentially what I presented to Franco in 2016 (except that I hadn't thought then that Time might have had a sun or sun-god on it). Franco thought well enough of my reconstruction to put it in his note (it actually didn't have to be in grid form, since it just assigns a different suit to each four trumps in order). In his turn, he offered a different order for the same sixteen trumps, that of minchiate. He had no suggestion of how to relate the four groups thus produced to the four suits. But it occurred to me later that if Prudence had been originally just one card closer to the other cardinals, or all had been together, there would be a cardinal virtue in each row of a 4x4 grid.Below is the grid in minchiate order with the Pope instead of the Wheel. Dummett's order would also have worked, or a sequence with Time above the theologicals, or one with Prudence immediately before the theologicals. [/img] In this case, the groups defined by the virtues are more like Marziano's than mine, defined by a grid and not just subgroups of the whole order: for example, 1, 5, 9, and 13 rather than 1, 2, 3, and 4. On the other hand, since there is nothing much in common between the members of Table 3's groups, they will be harder to remember than Marziano's. Not only that, they will be harder to remember than in mine, because mine simply follow the order of the trumps as a whole. Narratives could be constructed to help players remember the groups defined by rows in the grid. But there would be four such narratives, and each would be completely different from anything in the order of the trumps as a whole. Such a game would not have much appeal, and as a result any rule connecting groups of trumps with suits in this way would be quickly abandoned.

In a reconstruction that fits the placement of the trumps in the Beinecke's boxes, the groups are not only subsets of the whole in the same order, but are separated by the conjunction of two cardinal virtues, which makes them even easier to remember, once one knows the whole sequence. That result is accomplished simply by spreading the cardinal virtues out across the whole order, as is seen in the Lombard orders later. The same is true of the Ferrara-Venice orders, although with different spacing and order of virtues. There, however, a 3x4 array is especially attractive, with the World and the Bagatelle above and below the grid: allegorically, the figure on the World card is above the virtues, which are for humans, and the slick-talking trickster is below them. So it seems logical to me that in Lombardy, where Filippo would have wanted to play the game with his young daughter Bianca, and in Ferrara, where the d'Este also had young children, an easier version would be preferable. It can still be a teaching tool for "arousing to virtue." What this hypothesis has going for it is that the correlation of groups of trumps with suits by columns in a 4x4 grid fits the later orders in those places, and not only that, the virtues in the groups fit the virtue-suit correspondences that Moakley noticed. That such a result would occur by chance, in a game with Marziano's structure, would seem to be 1 in 4 for the first, 1 in 3 for the second, and 1 in 2 for the third, or 1 in 24 altogether, rather long odds.

I have thought of some objections. One is that every other deck besides the Modrone had 14 cards per suit, not 16, and 14 won't make a 4x4 grid. My answer is in two parts. First, people may not have thought it was important to make the trump suit the same number of cards as each of the other suits. For example, there is no necessity that Marziano's bird suits have had the same number of cards as his trump suit. These trump suits is quite different from the others. Second, if later it was thought that having the same number of cards as the other suits was important, as the 1441 "14 figures" in Ferrara and the 70 card decks there of 1457 suggest (although both can be explained otherwise), the game could be played with 14 cards; it is just that two of the groups would have one fewer card, or one group two fewer cards, or two cards would be outside a 4x3 grid.

Alternatively, a 14 card version could have developed first, without correlating virtues with suits, and a game with such correlations have been Marziano's innovation, which Filippo adapted to the other deck just by adding two cards, the non-Petrarchan Wheel and some other. (That is my nod to 5x14, although I would think the Empress would more likely be the second addition rather than a second card for Time. I have read somewhere that the inventor of the deck in Spain with just one trump, an Emperor, had been in Florence.)

However, the subjects involved, with their associations to Petrarch (even the name of the game) and the cardinal virtues fit the Visconti at least as well as Florence. One of the dukes' titles was "count of virtue," originally based on a county in France that they inherited through marriage but then put to other use. Marziano had probably been alluding to that title when he said that viewing the "deified heroes" he should "be ready to be aroused to virtue" (p. 23 of Caldwell/Ponzi translation). As for Petrarch, he had served the dukes of Milan and never returned to Florence. Knowing the cardinal virtues and their application to the real-life concerns articulated by Petrarch is central to the 4x4 game I am proposing and would have made an effective teaching game for children. Also, there is no problem in supposing a dissemination to Florence (or vice versa): various scholars and other experts, such as Brunelleschi, visited and returned, as well as Francesco Sforza and his soldiers, who went over to Florence from Milan in 1436 before returning in 1441 to Milan. On the other hand, even a 16 card version could have been invented in Florence, as the city had a 4x4 political structure - four quarters, each with four subdistricts), governed by representatives of the 21 guilds.

Another problem is that my whole argument depends on the supposition that Marziano had a rule connecting his groups with particular suits in the game and that such a rule carried over to the Modrone. Yes, that is my hypothesis: I am merely giving facts in support of it. Moreover, the rule would have to be in trick-taking rather than in scoring, because there is nothing about the four "papi" or the four highest trumps getting extra points that connects them with a suit, and for that there is only the last sentence of the treatise and the general idea, in educational games of the time, of learning by doing, in this case, teaching his groups of gods by means of the game. Then there is the supposition that Filippo would have wanted the game, of which the Modrone would be an example, to be modeled on Marziano's.

Third, there is a particular problem with the odds I have proposed, namely, we don't really know where Prudence would have gone, from just the Lombard orders. It seems to me that if the supposition is already granted that the game would have been modeled on Marziano's and that the extant cards were as distributed as they were in the boxes, Prudence could not have been in the first or second groups, because then there would necessarily have been two cardinal virtues in one column. That is not true of the third and fourth columns, as Prudence could just as well have preceded Temperance as followed it, which would invalidate the hypothesis. So the odds are reduced to 1 in 12 of happening by chance.

However, I think these odds are increased by another consideration. There is the puzzle about why the cataloger didn't give titles for the last two trumps, even though Keller had clearly indicated what they were, yet did put them in Keller's order. It seems to me that the highest trumps don't need any correlation with a suit, whether by virtue or otherwise (e.g. "fourth group"). They automatically win a trick unless, by my proposed rule, one of the other trumps played happens to be of the group correlated with the suit led. It is only necessary to know those three groups, as defined by the virtue in them. In that regard, it is not even necessary that there be a virtue card in that group. Since we know that Prudence was later dropped from the tarocchi, it follows that Prudence would have been the virtue associated with the highest trumps. So besides putting the odds back to 1 in 24, my proposed rule also can explain why Prudence was dropped.

In fact, the game is also possible without any virtue cards at all: the suits themselves could stand for the virtues. Huck has argued that the 14 “first artist” cards could have been of this type, with what is usually considered as the Justice card really being a card for Fame, as the lady with the balance and sword was a typical feature of “Triumph of Fame” illustrations, such an interpretation emphasized by the young man on a white horse behind her uniquely on the card. See viewtopic.php?p=17682#p17682.

An objection now might be that if this correlation of virtues with suits occurred to me, it could also have occurred to someone putting the cards in the boxes, using Keller’s order, Moakley’s book, and the relevant pages of Dummett’s Game of Tarot (its pp. 87 for the Modrone, 399-401 for the trumps, online in the Library part of this form). Moakley imagined a procession in which foot-soldiers alternated with floats carrying dignitaries, like the Beinecke’s alternation of suits and trumps, and such processions did occur (they did not have to be precisely like that of tarot). But her succession of suit-bearers goes in a different order, and her floats of trumps, the first one connected with both Cups and Batons, do not correspond to the Beinecke’s groups. Yes, someone could have imagined the missing virtue cards in their Lombard order, disregarding the very non-Lombard order of the extant trumps and alternation of trumps and suit cards. But of all of Moakley’s ideas, her suit-triumph correlations got the least attention (none, that I can find). I only thought of them in relation to a parallel with Marziano. While Marziano’s treatise was known before Pratesi’s 1989 article through a couple of short descriptions by Paul Durrieu (Moakley cites one in 1911, now in Google Books), he did not even mention suit cards. Moakley thought the deck was a set of 16 cards.

Although it seems to me that without knowing Marziano’s structure, it is unlikely that anyone would think of a 4x4 grid linking trumps with suits, it remains possible. To that extent, and probably for reasons I haven't thought of, how the boxes at Yale came to be the way they were remains a mystery, in part because of how the libraries involved, private as well as public, did not keep track of the trivial matter of how the trumps were stored or otherwise grouped and on what principle, if any. In such circumstances, perhaps this exercise can at least be a reminder of the complexities added by Marziano’s treatise and of how little we know – the tip of the proverbial iceberg - about the specific details of the origins of the tarot. The more we know the more there is to know.

Hello. Thank you very much for laying out the facts in detail so that it's possible to study the origin of the matter and assess it in search of a satisfactory explanation. I'll try to simplify. You have more knowledge than I do, so you can give your point of view or expand on the details. The matter is complex, and I may make mistakes when interpreting the data. I don't know if I'll be able to help, but I think it's appropriate to get to the point, now that you've presented the data. We need to find out the origin of the four-box classification.

You say that Keller adopted Dummett's order in 1981, although you may acknowledge that it could have been the other way around. I think that, if Dummett or another author had invented that classification, then in his book he would have presented the four groups of trumps instead of simply presenting an order of trumps.

When Young wrote to you in 2019, he told you that the deck is divided into four boxes, each containing one of the four suits and some trumps associated with that suit. I have a question. Had any employee seen the four boxes arranged in this way and thought there were trumps associated with suits, or did Young tell you that the cataloging employee prepared four boxes in this way? I'd like those four boxes to be the boxes the Cary family had delivered to Yale.

Young wrote to you in 2008 saying that the Modrone deck was grouped in four packets the way the Yale family delivered the deck to Yale. Young then wrote to you in 2016 saying he hadn't found any Cary family documents on the card classification. This is my guess. Perhaps you interpreted the word "information" ambiguously? I think perhaps the cards were arranged the way the Cary family delivered them, and then Young told you there are no Cary family texts on this matter. However, grouping the deck into four cardboard boxes is a way of transferring structural information without needing to write an explanatory text. Who prepared the four boxes? The Cary family or an anonymous Yale employee with a good imagination?

The question about the world and the nameless angel on the internet could be a mistake by the person who created the website, who perhaps didn't know the names of both cards or forgot to title them because they wanted to finish and go home for dinner. In any case, it could be an indication that the Cary family delivered the deck in four boxes without any written explanation. The anonymous employee then posted that structure on the website and added a title to each card so that the classification of trumps into four suits was clearly visible. Young then thought it was all a mistake and removed the structure from the website in 2019. But what exactly was the misunderstanding that Young discovered before deleting the deck's structure from the internet?

In your second post, you develop the topic further, but I don't know if the boxes mistery is clearly resolved. Sorry if I didn't fully understand the box issue. An anonymous librarian prepared four boxes to group the letters in his own way in the order of a list by Dummett that Keller displayed at the Beinecke? Later, I hope study (with your second publication) how to classify the Modrone Triomphs. The topic is very interesting, as well as complex. I hope these reflections help simplify the point that I am most interested in clarifying now: who prepared those four boxes? thanks a lot