Updating Ch. 3 (Howard)

In this chapter does not only talk about the family, but what the suit cards might have meant in the context of such a family, on one side the hereditary rulers of the largest and wealthiest city in Italy, and on the other the mercenary soldier of peasant stock who captured and kept that city by force of arms.

Where the two unite in Moakley's imagination is in the companies of knights that accompanied the floats in processions and engaged in jousts as part of the festivities. She says:

With a little imagination one can see that each of the four ordinary suits in any pack of cards is a company of knights ready for one of the jousts or tourneys which were the favorite sports of medieval Europe. Each knight wears the heraldic device of his own company, but "differenced" by number, according to his rank. At the head of each company is its King-of-arms, its Queen of Love and Beauty, and its chief Knight. In the tarocchi and minchiate (another variety of tarot cards), there is also a Page.

With more imagination one can see that each of these four companies of knights is devoted to one of the cardinal virtues and wears its device: the sword representing Justice, the cup of Temperance, the staff or column of Fortitude, and the coin or mirror of Prudence (1). In northern Europe these suits became known as spades, hearts, clubs, and diamonds, respectively.
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1. Justice was usually represented as a figure with scales and a sword, Temperance as pouring liquid from one vessel into another, Fortitude with a staff or a broken column, and Prudence with a mirror by means of which she can look behind her (coins as a symbol of Prudence are rarer). The virtues are often mentioned in relation 'to the Visconti and Sforza, for one of their titles was "Conte di Virtit.” At the death of Giangaleazzo Visconti the virtues were represented as mourning him as their lord: "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 supporter, o confident sword, you kept our territory safe in the high places and the flat!](Arch stor tomb, anno xv, p 792). For "mirrors" and "columns" as names for the suits of coins and staves see Chatto (Facts, p 53). His authority is Innocentio Ringhieri, Cento giuochi liberali et d'ingegno (Bologna 1551) p 132.

The reason Moakley emphasizes the virtues, and in particular the cardinal four, is that only one of them is actually preserved in the deck. Her inference, that that they were probably all there, is not challenged except by one researcher, "Huck" on THF, who theorizes that while all seven were present in the Cary-Yale, they were all removed for the less serious PMB--except for Justice, which is what the hero, shown on his white horse at the top of the PMB card, strives for so as to attain Fame, one of the six "Trionfi" of Petrarch.

As the correspondence of suit symbols to particular symbols for the four cardinal virtues, that is a part of Moakley's analysis that has been discreetly ignored by later researchers. An exception is Hurst, who draws attention to it only to  obscure its value as an insight about the suits. Hurst says (http://wikivisually.com/wiki/User:Michael_Hurst/Moakley):

Moakley's interpretation had four main elements: Each suit-sign represented one of the Cardinal Virtues; the cards of each suit represented a company of knights; these companies of knights, representing the four virtues, were taken to accompany the procession of the trumps; and the primary allegorical meaning of the suit-signs was travestied in a ribald fashion, in keeping with the Carnivalesque nature of the game.

Hurst objects to such a twist on the "primary meaning", apparently referring to her analysis of the suit signs in terms of the male and female sex organs, Staves and Swords for the one, Cups and Coins for the other. That is ribald, to be sure; whether  sexual symbolism "travesties" the virtues, as far as I know the "primary allegorical meaning" that Hurst talks about, seems dubious to me That identification, with the cardinal virtues, would seem of considerable interest, not only for the PMB but also for the Cary-Yale. However I will save that discussion for later, in the post on Moakley's "Procession" and the individual suits.

At the same time I think it likely that the PMB does suggest the meanings she has in mind. the phallus and the womb. That there is a "ribald" element in Bastoni is suggested by the green sleeves on the court cards (at left, the King and Queen, from Dummett's The Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards, 1986). They also appear on the Empress card, the Love card, and the Queen of Cups. It would appear to be a fertility symbol. In such a context, it may well be significant that, besides the Queen of Batons, the only other queen with green sleeves is that of Cups, for the womb. Moreover, the fertility of the Empress is an important part of her role, to bear children to continue the stability of the empire and make alliances with other ruling families. The same would be true of the female Lover, in the context of a marriage. There is also the English folk song "Greensleeves", clearly implying the

sexual meaning. Wikipedia says that the form of composition is Italian, of a form that did not reach England until Elizabethan times; it offers the theory that the sexual meaning came from "green gown", for tell-tale grass stains on women's skirts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensleeves).. But it might simply represent new life, as in the springtime, the greening of the trees, and where a "young man's fancy turns", as the saying goes. True to form, the PMB's Empress's sleeves are green, too.

In the context of a social game, ribald interpretations are inevitable. That they were anticipated by the designers of these cards is likely, given the green sleeves. By then decks with the four suits had already been in use for fifty years at least. Even the ordinary meanings are occasions for jokes, as in the case of the Pages of Cups in the Metropolitan cards, shown downing their cups with gusto. No one would suppose it was just water. There is also Aretino, in Le Carte Parlante, in the course of explaining the meaning of the suit cards (http://www.associazioneletarot.it/page.aspx?id=180&lng=ENG):

PAD[OVANO]: Swords?
CAR[DS]: Death of those who despair from gaming.
PAD: Staves?
CAR: The punishment that deceivers deserve.
PAD: Coins?
CAR: The substance of gaming.
PAD: And Cups?
CAR: The drinks that reconcile quarrels between gamers.

That the virtues--7 of them--were part of triumphal parades we also know from contemporary accounts: Naples in 1443, Florence of 1452 (find "virtues" at http://pratesitranslations.blogspot.com/2016/11/nov-10-2016-ca-1450-civic-processions.html; "banners" are also described for 1452). Neither as the banners of a group of professions nor as the group of 7 virtues was there the element of ribaldry that Moakley sees in the cards, her phallic staff of fortitude and wombish cup of Temperance. But these are not processions of cards in a deck of playinng cards..

For Temperance, we know that ribald associations did occur to people in that context, if only from Lollio's "Invective" of 1550 Ferrara. Speaking of the inventor of the game, he says (http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Lollio_and_Imperiali,_Ferrara_1550_ca):

Et che sia ver, colei che versa i fiaschi,
Ci mostra chiar, ch'ei fusse un ebbriaco:

(And she who pours the flasks clearly shows
the truth of the fact that he was a drunkard.)

Whether being the occasion for such jokes is part of the "original" meaning of the suits and the virtues in the context of the tarot is another matter. If Moakley says that, she may be going too far. We need to pay attention to what she says as her argument unfolds. 

Otherwise, this chapter is mostly about the Visconti and Sforza families. It is quite accurate, as far as I can tell. She could have brought out more explicitly Francesco and Bianca Maria's commitment to Fortitude, Temperance, Prudence, and Justice in their lives, and how their sons did not do likewise. This is detailed in A Renaissance Court, by Lubkin. Also, it is important to be aware of Bianca Maria's and Francesco's relationships with other cities important to the early tarot. Bianca Maria Sforza had visited Ferrara for a period of months in 1440-144; she is recorded as being given there, at New Years, "14 figures", by Leonello d'Este. The Sforzas had off and on again service with Florence, as far back as the war against Pisa in 1411. In the late 1430s up to 1440 Francesco Sforza was in service to Florence, and his men helped Florence defeat Milan in the Battle of Anghieri, 1440 (see Dale Kent, Cosimo de' Medici and the Florentine Renaissance, 2000, pp. 279-280). After that, Filippo Maria Visconti was able to lure him back to his service only for brief periods. These men went to whoever paid the most, and Filippo Maria was wily but not generous. He may have wished to give Sforza the false impression that if he was loyal he would be declared his heir; Sforza knew full well Filippo's aristocratic airs and did not fall into that trap.

The numerological bit at the end of Moakley's chapter is of course of interest. The relevance I can see is that since there were lot books at that time based on three throws of the dice, with a different fortune for each of the 56 combinations, 56 cards would make it easy to convert the dice lot-book to cards. The same would be true of a lot book with 22 combinations (the 22nd being for a misthrow). In fact there is evidence that the ordinary deck was used for divination by means of lot-books at least by the 16th century, so probably earlier. There isn't any such evidence of lot-books for tarot decks, however..

For the tarot sequence, what seems most relevant is what she says about 21 in relation to 6:

Robert Graves, in his Nazarene Gospel Restored, refers to a triangular number as the "Philonian fulfilment" of its base; e. .g. twenty-one is the PhiIonian fulfilment of six.

I have not seen Graves' book (snippet views online do not yield anything with "Philonian" and "twenty-one" or "21"on the same page), but I can guess the point. That is, if 6 is a perfect number corresponding to the days of creation, then 21 is perhaps its "fulilment", and so the "New Jerusalem" at the end of time, or Adam's fulfilment in Christ. "Philonian" means "pertaining to Philo of Alexandria", according to the online dictionaries. He wrote about the Creation and the 10 commandments in Pythagorean terms. So it is perhaps a synonym for "Pythagorean". As such, just as the sacred 10 is the sum of the first four numbers 1+2+3+4, the sum of the first six numbers is 1+2+3+4+5+6 = 22. However 22, the number of chapters in the Book of Revelation, may have had a life of its own as a sacred number, deriving from the 22 books of the Hebrew Bible. Whether that number of books, a number which in fact varied depending on what books were considered canonical and which not, was chosen for its Pythagorean significance is hard to say.

There is also what Moakley says about 7 and 11.

For seven and eleven as symbolical of sin see Hopper (Medieval) p 24, 87, and p. 52. (Dante took over eleven as the basis for the dimensions of Hell). In the Morgante of Pulci the giant Margutte boasts of having seventy-seven mortal sins.

On p. 24 Hopper mentions contexts in which 7 is used in the context of Lev. 26:14, "I will punish you 7 times for your sin"; but he gives many more places where it is used positively. It seems just a way of saying "a bunch" in sacred contexts. On p. 52 there is no mention of either 7 or 11, just 3 and 4; but on p. 53 the number 7 is discussed in relation to "the established order of worlds and gods". So there are 7 planets. P. 87 talks about the number 11, and it is clear that it is a number of error and sin. So a preacher could indeed polemicize against the tarot sequence, if he wanted to, as double sinfulness, or sinfulness sevenfold if one card isn't counted.