Magic Moon wrote: 25 Jun 2025, 19:25
Hi Steve. Thanks for the reflections and for Petrarch's text. It's a very interesting background and also relates to the wheel of fortune. Was that illustration in Petrarch's book on good and bad fortune?
The illustration is from an old post of mine in this forum - but the link no works - so I cannot get to the source of it. While his remedies against good and bad fortune is where Petrach's application of Reason v. Passions is most widely dealt with, references to it may be found in other of his works too. For example, in this passage from Petrarch’s Secretum (Book I), in which Augustine and Francesco (Petrarch’s persona) discuss the passions of the soul and their relation to Fortune, time, and divine origin:
AUGUSTINUS:
Do you know what hinders your thinking?
FRANCISCUS:
That is what I ask for; that is what I so deeply long to know.
AUGUSTINUS:
Listen, then. I will not deny that your soul was nobly formed from above — but do not doubt that, through its contact with this body by which it is enclosed, it has greatly degenerated from its original nobility. And not only has it degenerated, but over a long span of time it has grown dull, as if it had forgotten its origin and its divine Creator.
The passions that arise from this mingling with the body — and the soul’s forgetfulness of its higher nature — were, it seems, divinely expressed by Virgil when he said:
They have a fiery vigor and a heavenly origin,
as much as harmful bodies do not impede them,
and earthly limbs do not dull them, and their dying members.
From this come their
fears and desires, their sorrows and joys;
they do not look to the heavens, shut up in darkness and in a blind prison.
Do you discern in these poetic words that four-headed monster so hostile to human nature?
FRANCISCUS:
I see with perfect clarity the fourfold division of the soul’s passion: first split by the orientation to the present or future, then each of these further divided by the soul’s perception of good or evil. Thus, by four opposing winds, the calm of the human mind is scattered and lost.
Petrarch here — via Augustine and Virgil — maps out the Stoic model of the passions. The four are:
Metus – fear (future evil)
Cupiditas – desire (future good)
Dolor – sorrow (present evil)
Gaudium – joy (present good)
These correspond to temporal judgments: we suffer not because of the present or future in themselves, but because of our evaluations of them.
The Virgilian quote from the Aeneid (VI.730–734) is used to describe the divine origin of the soul and its imprisonment in flesh, which dulls its divine faculties. Petrarch follows this Neoplatonic reading: the soul forgets its origin and, instead of contemplating eternity, becomes ensnared in transient emotion. This enslavement to passion makes us vulnerable to Fortune, whose essence is change and instability — the antithesis of divine order or reason. Thus, fortune rules those not governed by reason.
Francesco’s breaks this down first, by time:
Present (→ joy/sorrow)
Future (→ desire/fear)
Then by value judgment:
Good (→ desire/joy)
Evil (→ fear/sorrow)
Of Petrarch's remedies, Michael Hurst once wrote:
Michael Hurst wrote:
The historical precursors are Boccaccio's Casibus and Petrarch's Remediis. Virtually every story in The Examples of Famous Men is an example of a great man's rise, his reversal (a so-called "tragedy of Fortune" or "medieval tragedy"), downfall and death. It was one of the most popular works in late 14th-century Italy and continued in popularity, in various translations and imitations, for centuries. In the Tarot de Marseille/Milanese ordering, each turn of Fortune's Wheel is capped with one of the three Moral Virtues. This is the theme of Petrarch's Remedies for Good and Bad Fortune. While Boccaccio wrote an encyclopedia of moralized biographies illustrating Fortune's Wheel, Petrarch wrote an encyclopedia of circumstance, good and bad, and the way in which the four Passions of the Soul were mitigated by virtue. These two Latin moral works were the main reasons for the fame and respect of Petrarch and Boccaccio at the time Tarot was invented.
viewtopic.php?p=13200#p13200
magic moon wrote:
In Spanish, a verse is a line of text. In what text, edition, or manuscript do you say there are triplets and no quatrains?
From recollection Solerto says the final line in each chapter is not in viti manuscript but is in [all?] the printed editions.
PS: It seems that Hieronimo Beniueni was the one who initiated the publication of this book in 1523 in Venice, and Zoppino was the printer or ilustrator.
Giralomo Benivieni, a friend of Pico and Ficino (in 1487 he published verses based upon Ficino's translation of Plato's Symposium, with a commentary by Pico). *
Benivieni was an adherent of Savanarola, and also “...revived Jacopone’s doctrine that madness for Christ’s sake is true wisdom, and wrote the Bonfire songs that Savanarola’s adherents sang in their procession.” Here is one of those Bonfire songs (which Alain has previously made reference to in the "Le Tarot arithmologique" thread) :
Non fu mai el piu bel solazzo,
Never was there more beautiful solace,
Piu giocondo ne maggiore,
more joyful or greater,
Che per zelo, e per amore
than through zeal, and through love
Di Jesu, diventar pazzo.
of Jesus, to become crazy.
...
Ognum gridi com’ io grido,
everyone shout as I shout,
Sempre pazzo, pazzo, pazzo.”
always crazy, crazy, crazy.
As an adherent of Savonarola, he was also an active participant in the bonfires of the vanities of 1497, so it seems strange that of Boiado's poems he chose to include one about a card game!? One to while away the time, in this vain world... but perhaps the subject of the four passions, the world as something adored by fools, the remedial power of virtue is the subject of interest for Benivieni, that elevates it. Here is part of another poem of his, I don't have its title, but let's call it:
The Remedy
Io co darti anima mia
I intend to give you, my soul,
un rimedio sol che vale
a single remedy that truly works
quanto ogni altro a ciascun male
more than all others for every ill
che si chiama la pazzia.
which is called madness.
To tre oncs al meno di speme,
Take at least three ounces at least of hope,
tre di fede e sei di amore,
three of faith and six of love,
due di pianto e poni insieme
two of tears, and mix all together
tutto al fuoco del timore.
then set it all on the fire of fear.
Fa da poi bollir tre hore
Then let it boil for three hours
premi enfine vi agiugni tanto
Then strain it, and at the end add
di humilita e dolor, quanto
of much humility and sorrow as
basta a far questa pazzia.
is enough to make this madness.
I shall give you, my soul,
a single remedy that truly works,
more than all others for every ill —
which is called madness.
Take at least three ounces of hope,
three of faith, and six of love,
two of tears, and mix them all together,
then set it all on the fire of fear.
Then let it boil for three full hours,
strain it, and at the end add
as much humility and sorrow
as is enough to make this madness.
Bonfire Songs: Savonarola's Musical Legacy, Volume 1 by Patrick Paul Macey
* Quote
"But, from the standpoint of literature, the most interesting production of the school of Marsilio Ficino is the little book of Pico and Benivieni. It was in 1479, when Marsilio had completed his Plato and was about to apply himself to the interpretation of Plotinus, that Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, then seventeen years old, came to Florence. At a social gathering, held perhaps in the Medicean palace, he fell into discussion with a Florentine citizen, ten years older than himself, Girolamo di Paolo Benivieni, and formed with him one of the most famous friendships in the annals of literature."
End quote
From the introduction to "PLATONICK DISCOURSE UPON LOVE" by PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA, Edited by EDMUND G. GARDNER, 1914.
Online here:
https://archive.org/details/platonickdi ... 1/mode/2up
Magic Moon wrote: 25 Jun 2025, 19:25
PS: It seems that Hieronimo Beniueni was the one who initiated the publication of this book in 1523 in Venice, and Zoppino was the printer or ilustrator. Very good information! I don't see the title "card game" in that edition.
It appears in the 'title' (or introduction) to the penultimate sonnet (the prologue Sonnet in Viti).
Argumento de li ditti capituli de Mattheo Maria Boiardo sopra
un nouo gioco de carte.
Argument of the said chapters of Matthew Maria Boiardo on
a new card game.
IF there are additions or other poetic amendments to Boiardo's original manuscript, then I would suspect Benivieni made them rather than the printer. However, it may also be possible, if Boairdo had several manuscript copies made, that he made additions and amendments himself between the production of copies. Fortunately, apart from the extra line at the end of each chapter, and a a line and a word in the Sonnet which Viti says he re-wrote, the differences seem othographic / dialectical in the main.