mikeh wrote: 24 Apr 2021, 08:28 So it seems reasonable to me that when Minchiate changed, the Bolognese tarocchi would have changed as well, although which would have come first is not yet settled.
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But changing from four names to calling the four all by the same name makes more sense if they all had equal power from the start. So, at least from this perspective, it is more likely that the practice started with the Bolognese 78 card deck, and then spread to Minchiate in Florence, than the reverse, as well as continuing in Bologna with the 62 card deck, whenever it was instituted.

I fully agree: the practice must surely have started in Bologna because the Bolognese had given all four cards equal rank, meaning that they would have often talked about them as a single group, and would therefore have needed a quick and easy way of referring to them.

But I think it is actually settled that this happened in Bolognese tarocchino before it happened in Minchiate. We have definite evidence that the Bolognese were calling those four trumps "Papi" in Tarocchino before the end of the 16th century, which is some time before the earliest indications of the similar practice in Minchiate. The evidence comes in a poem first brought to our attention by Andrea Vitali in his essay "Taroch è diventato lo mio core". The poem is a villanelle, a type of short song that originated in Naples. It includes the lines "La Temperanza Papi e Bagatino / Circondano d'intorno à sto mio core".

Vitali's source appears to have been Bianca Maria Galante's book Le Villanelle alla Napolitana (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1954, p. 76). Galante, in turn, took the song from an edition published by Pandolfo Malatesta in Milan. However, there seems to have been an earlier edition, by Malatesta's partner Gratiadio Ferioli in 1594; Malatesta seems to have been active for many years after Ferioli, so the edition Galante was using was probably a later edition. The Ferioli edition of 1594 can be read on Google Books: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Vi ... =diventato As we can see from that 1594 edition, the author was "Il Sivello," which was the stage name of Giovanni Gabrielli, a commedia dell'arte actor. He was famous far and wide, but he lived and worked mainly in Bologna. So even though the song was evidently written for an audience in a Type B region (most likely in the neighbouring city of Ferrara), it contains a number of trump names that are distinctly Bolognese.

The later, Malatesta edition corrected some errors of punctuation and orthography in the 1594 edition, but nevertheless introduced a couple of new alterations: Taroch in the first line instead of Tarochi and, more importantly, gionto instead of giusta in the third line. The song in the 1594 edition reads as follows:

Villanella sopra il Giocho de Tarochi.

Tarochi è diuentato lo mio core
Matto và per il mondo ai sorte fella
Con giusta Angelo, Sole, Luna, et stella.
Errando fugge l'infiammata casa
Il Diauolo disprezza, è morte chiama
Ch'apicato finir la vita brama.
Il gobbo li fà luce acciò la Ruota
Per forza lo conduca in man d'amore
Che il char' solo trionfa à tutte l'hore.
La temperanza Papi è bagatino.
Circondano d'intorno à sto mio core
Si che Tarochi è fatto per tuo amore.

The change of giusta to gionto had caused some confusion previously, because it had caused Justice to be missing from the trump sequence. The 1594 edition makes it clear that Justice was definitely there originally, and if we insert a comma after giusta, the line makes perfect sense: "with Justice, Angel, Sun, Moon, and Star." It seems that the Milanese publishers, being unfamiliar with the tarot terminology of both Bologna and Ferrara, made what they thought were "corrections" to the original manuscript: Not only did giusta end up being changed to gionto in the second edition, but they must have also changed the song's first word as well, in both editions. In Bologna and Ferrara, the tarot game was known as tarocco (which in Bologna was later modified to tarocchino to refer to games using the shorter 62-card deck), but in Milan it was always in the plural form tarocchi. As a result of the publishers' miscorrection, we have plural "Tarochi" in the first and last lines together with a verb and past participle in the singular form, which is grammatically incorrect ("Tarochi è diuentato" / "Tarochi è fatto" = tarots has become / tarots is made ). Making it plural also messed up the pun: Il Sivello was obviously playing on the two meanings of tarocco, both "tarot" and "foolish."

To get back to the topic at hand, we can see that the song contains several trump names that were typical of Bologna: Giusta, Forza, Bagatino, and Papi. Il Sivello did take his audience into consideration: He used the names Casa and Gobbo for the Tower and the Old Man respectively, terms that were standard in Ferrara but are not known from Bologna, and his Gobbo seems to be carrying a lantern, which the Old Man in Bologna definitely wasn't. It's possible that all the trump names in the song were also used in Ferrara at least sometimes—we know the Ferrarese sometimes used the names Forza and Bagatino, so maybe they might have used Giusta and Papi occasionally too—but I think it's nevertheless pretty clear that Il Sivello must have been using those names primarily because he was familiar with them from Bologna. So we can safely conclude that the Bolognese were already using the term "Papi" for the Emperor, Empress, and the papal pair (whatever their genders may have been at this stage) several years before Croce wrote his poem, and decades before the first sign of the term "Papi" being used by Minchiate players.

Well spotted and argued, Nathaniel. Also, it seems to me there might have been a time when the four were informally called "papi", meaning "bosses," while also retaining their individual names if desired, for example to make a joke about an empress capturing an emperor.

mikeh wrote: 25 Apr 2021, 00:48 Also, it seems to me there might have been a time when the four were informally called "papi", meaning "bosses," while also retaining their individual names if desired, for example to make a joke about an empress capturing an emperor.

I think that would have inevitably been the case, because there would have certainly been a time when people were not yet fully accustomed to calling them "i papi" all the time and would still have used the individual names as well. But I think Croce's poem is also proof enough that people were still conscious of the identities of the individual card subjects at that time (i.e. around 1600) and were still capable of referring to them individually if they wanted to.

Personally, I don't think we need to interpret "papi" as meaning "bosses" exactly, or anything else in particular, for that matter. I think it was basically just a shortening of the longer expression "papi e imperatori" (cf. Piscina's term "Imperatori e Papi"). The players would have been saying that expression so often that they inevitably abbreviated it to "papi"—simply for reasons of linguistic practicality, not because they especially liked the meaning of that word. Sure, "papa" can be used figuratively to mean someone who exercises absolute authority, and that no doubt facilitated this shortening. But after that, its meaning would have essentially become "those four cards in the deck" without people really thinking any more about it.

About "bosses," that was my simplification, perhaps over-simplification, of something Ross once wrote about the meaning of the term, I think "big man" was his expression, and also included "fathers", and anyway more than popes. Well, I will ask a native speaker. In English, it would seem strange to shorten "popes and emperors" to just "popes". We would probably keep on calling them empress, etc, or if we didn't think females were appropriate, then emperor for two and pope for two, depending on the hat. Italian, I think, is more inclusive. How much I'm not sure.

mikeh wrote: 25 Apr 2021, 09:09 About "bosses," that was my simplification, perhaps over-simplification, of something Ross once wrote about the meaning of the term, I think "big man" was his expression, and also included "fathers", and anyway more than popes. Well, I will ask a native speaker. In English, it would seem strange to shorten "popes and emperors" to just "popes". We would probably keep on calling them empress, etc, or if we didn't think females were appropriate, then emperor for two and pope for two, depending on the hat. Italian, I think, is more inclusive. How much I'm not sure.

Don't forget that Italian, like most European languages where all the words have a gender, uses the masculine plural form to refer to mixed groups of males and females—so a group of ten girls is called le ragazze in Italian, but if just one boy joins them, the group is then called i ragazzi which literally means "the boys." It's utterly patriarchal, but it is what it is... So both papi and imperatori could have meant male and female figures together. In other words, the two terms don't just mean "popes" and "emperors" respectively, but should rather be understood as "papal couple" and "imperial couple." It's like los Reyes Catolicos in Spanish, meaning King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella; in Italian, that's i re cattolici, literally the "Catholic kings." Or you could just search Google Images for "coppia di Imperatori" or search Google Books for "gli imperatori Maria Teresa." For a modern example of "i re" used to refer to a king and queen, there's "i re olandesi" meaning the Dutch royal couple here.

In other words, there's absolutely no reason why papi or imperatori need to be interpreted as referring exclusively to male figures. Certainly papi can have the meaning "figures wielding great authority" or "bosses," which would have made it relatively easy for the term to be extended to the imperial couple as well as the papal couple. But don't make the mistake of thinking that the term inherently implied "fathers" or "popes" or any other necessarily male personages.

Here's what I wrote on the ludic usage of "papi" -
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1356&p=20607&hilit=big+guys#p20607

Don’t get hung up on the term itself, “papi”. “Papa” just has the meaning of “dad”, exactly like our “papa”. I could suggest it was a colloquial term for “grand men”, “head honchos”, “big guys”, etc. or maybe even more slangy, like “poobahs”. Historically, a more serious argument is that the term is short form of “papi ed imperatori”, so just “papi” as a catch-all.

But really, it doesn’t matter what is depicted for players to use the name.

Thus, check your Minchiate rules from historic sources. They never name the first five cards with descriptive terms either, they are all just “papi”. Dummett notes that a diminutive form “papetti” is even found in some accounts of the rules (similar to how the Bolognese mori are now called “moretti”), for more of the cards. “Papa Uno” is the Bagatto. “Papa Cinque” is Love. The three princely figures are Papi two to four. All of them are called “papi”, but none of them depicts a pope. In this game the term has become ludic jargon, its literal etymological meaning has no relationship to the figures on the cards.

The Savoy game calls them “papots”, another ludic word rather than a term applied to real popes or emperors or both...

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: 25 Apr 2021, 10:32

Don’t get hung up on the term itself, “papi”. “Papa” just has the meaning of “dad”, exactly like our “papa”.

This is not quite correct. I wasn't going to point this out because I thought it was a minor issue, but I now realize that it is actually important, in light of what I just wrote about papi not necessarily referring to an all-male group. The Italian word papa does not have the meaning of “dad”, exactly like our “papa”. In Italian, the word papa, meaning pope, is stressed only on the first syllable, whereas Italian papà, meaning "dad," is stressed equally on both syllables. Despite their distantly related etymology, they are nevertheless two quite different words, as different as "coroner" and "corona," which sound the same in British English except for where the stress falls (sorry, that was the only example that came to my mind).

And most importantly for our purposes, only papa meaning "pope" has the plural form papi. The plural of papà meaning "dad" is the same as the singular: un papà, due papà = one dad, two dads. Which is to say, papi can only mean "popes"—or, if used figuratively, "bosses, head honchos" etc. It does not mean "dads, fathers."

As far as I'm aware, there is no evidence to suggest that the situation was any different in the Renaissance. Under Papa, Florio's dictionaries of 1598 and 1611 list only the religious meaning (albeit with a markedly Protestant flavor: "a Pope, a bishop of Rome" in 1598, and then in 1611 "a Pope or chiefe Bishop. Also used for Sathan in the Vocative case"). The word that Italian infants used when addressing their fathers was listed by Florio as Pappa, which may or may not have been pronounced the same as modern papà, but which would definitely have been pronounced differently than Florio's Papa, otherwise he would not have listed it separately (it would have been pronounced either with equal stress distribution, like papà, or with an audible double "p," or both). Then as now, papi did not mean dads.

... :-) ... hm, for the appearance of papa or papi in Italian card decks we have clear visual examples, that the termini do not simply mean "pope" or "popes".
In the Minchiate even "Love" could be a papa. 1-2-3-4-5, 1-2-3-4 and 2-3-4-5 could be called the fathers of all other numbers, cause without them no 6 and 7 and all the others could exist.
And that's just card-player's slang. In an usual Doppelkopf game a heart-10 is called Dulle, a club-Queen an Alte, a spades-Queen a Blaue, a club-Jack is the Karlchen Müller and a diamond-Ace is a Fuchs and in my special group of players once "Kaufmann+1" meant, that you have 5 Kings at your hand and that is in Doppelkopf a reason, that the cards must be new distributed again. And the terminus Kaufmann+1 (Kaufmann-plus-eins) was created in a situation, when a player with the name Kaufmann claimed to have 5 kings and threw the cards on the table and an opponent detected, that he had only 4. Naturally you could understand the joke only, when you was present at this opportunity. I was present. Kaufmann was punished and had to pay some drinks for that.

Terminology Minchiate
Trumps are called tarocchi. Counting cards are called carte di conto, and trumps which are counting cards tarocchi nobili. Trumps which are not counting cards are called tarocchi ignobili, and empty suit cards are called cartiglie or cartaccie. As already mentioned, the top five trumps are called Arie and the lowest five trumps, from 1 to 5, are called Papi. The 31 to 35 are called sopratrenti (above 30); likewise the 21 to 29 are sometimes called sopraventi (above 20) and the 11 to 19 sottoventi (below 20). The trumps from 33 upwards, particularly the 33, 34 and 35, are called rossi, because of their red backgrounds.

Sopraventi and Sopratrenti etc. are also number expressions.

Nathaniel wrote: 26 Apr 2021, 06:30

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: 25 Apr 2021, 10:32

Don’t get hung up on the term itself, “papi”. “Papa” just has the meaning of “dad”, exactly like our “papa”.

This is not quite correct. I wasn't going to point this out because I thought it was a minor issue, but I now realize that it is actually important, in light of what I just wrote about papi not necessarily referring to an all-male group. The Italian word papa does not have the meaning of “dad”, exactly like our “papa”. In Italian, the word papa, meaning pope, is stressed only on the first syllable, whereas Italian papà, meaning "dad," is stressed equally on both syllables. Despite their distantly related etymology, they are nevertheless two quite different words, as different as "coroner" and "corona," which sound the same in British English except for where the stress falls (sorry, that was the only example that came to my mind).

You are right, of course, and that part of my statement was careless.

I also recognize that the term papi indicates nothing about the images or genders being referred to by that title. As I pointed out in the original post, papa and papi became ludic jargon, so that in Minchiate the trumps called papa individually and papi collectively contain no "popes" at all.

So a Popess and an Empress could have been original, and also called papi. I just happen to believe, or incline to the opinion, that the four original papi in the Florentine Ur-Tarot were, in fact, four male figures, two popes and two emperors. Distinctive female features for two of them emerged from some workshop, perhaps as luxury painters had to define the characters, or as an engraver's fancy. But this is pure speculation, not worth arguing about.