Updating Cups, Cards II-V (Howard)

Here are the pip cards in Cups that Moakley was talking about, plus the Page. She has correctly identified the Visconti insignia. I only want to make additions.
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The Ace has a fountain (a Sforza device if such is intended), which brings to mind the Fountains of Youth that were popular subjects then; they usually showed old people climbing in and young naked people amorously involved in the water. These two cards are quite suitable to introduce cards about Love and his captives.

Here I want to call attention to the cups themselves (not the cards, the objects), as they are depicted on the court cards. If you look carefully, their tops are reminiscent of church steeples. Other early Italian-suited court cards have tops, but not that elongated. It is easiest to see with the Page (above). It is hard to see on Moakley's reproduction of the King, so I give it in Dummett's color reproduction (The Visconti Sforza Tarot Cards) along with a sketch of another version of the same deck (surely later) and a reproduction of the version the sketch is from.

Whether you accept the "steeples" or not, there is a double meaning to love and cups: earthly love, but also heavenly love; cups of beer, but also communion cups. For the latter, the group of ten marchers following the four courts could just as well be clerics, as I seem to see in part of the “Battle of Carnival and Lent”, on the "Carnival" side of the painting, which seems to me significant. Behind them, we may suppose, are their captains, the King-at-arms, etc. They at least seem sober and are all dressed the same.

I doubt if these men, if indeed they are clerics, would be introducing “captives of love”, followed by a cart with Cupid as the all-powerful god. But if it were a cart carrying Temperance, they might, in the right circumstances. Preachers were fond of Temperance. But with the wrong crowd, people might interpret her pitchers in the wrong way.

In the Cary-Yale deck, at least as it is catalogued, triumphs are assigned to suits in a particular order, and Cups appears as the third of the four, with Charity, the Chariot (Chastity), and Death all assigned to that suit. Probably one or more cards are missing that are assigned to this group. I would hypothesize exactly one, namely Temperance, put somewhere between 9th and 12th place, out of 16. Temperance--self-control--makes the other triumphs possible, and is naturally associated with Cups as religion. Her vessels remind us of communion. Chastity is the virtue of nuns and priests. Religion is the antidote to Death, but requires God’s charity as well as our own charitable acts (as seen in the Breugel). Temperance, as self-control, makes Chastity possible, delays Death and allows us to have money left over for Charity. This is my non-spoof, cleric-friendly version of one part of the procession, not at the beginning but just past the middle.

My hypothesis is strengthened if we look at the King of Cups in the CY. It is not exactly the delicate prince of the PMB, but more reminiscent of the sad-faced Bagatella and the Bembo portraits associated with Christ. In this case the closest match is with a King David identified by Tanzi as by Bonifacio Bembo of the early 1440s.

One of the criticisms that O'Neill leveled at Moakley was that Carnival is meant as preparation for Lent. If so, there should be symbols, on the last night, that do prepare It seems to me that the suit of Cups, in virtue of its double meaning, is in both worlds. In fact, even as womb the symbol is not simply ribald, but also suggests the gestation of Christ and the new man of Christ. This is true wherever Cups is inserted into the order of triumphs.


I turn now to the four so-called "captives of Love". As I have said already, her case would have been stronger had she taken the order of the "Steele Sermon", where Love is closer to those "captives", or even the C or A order, where Love comes right after them.

Moakley apparently thought she needed no argument that the German lady and her husband are "captives of love", and perhaps she is right, in the "softened" sense not of an uncontrollable passion but of that between lawfully married man and wife in the business of begetting heirs. The Empress and the Emperor are united by marriage, with its obligatory communion cup (marriage is a sacrament and includes a mass), and a temperate amount of drink might help them express their love, his Fortitude (wink-wink) meeting her Temperance.

However she does feel the need for an argument when it comes to the Popess and Pope, and for good reason, since they are not, in any of the examples, legendary or not, a married pair. Her argument is that (1) Juno and Jupiter were "captives of love"--he by affairs, her (I assume) by jealousy; (2) Jupiter in the Middle Ages, right up to the time of the tarot, was seen as a priest and pictured in clerical garb. She refers to Seznec. Seznec has pictures; he explains that the Arabs depicted him that way, and the Europeans copied the Arabs. (3) The "game of the gods" of Filippo Visconti had Jupiter and Juno in low positions (numbers 1 and 5); (4) At some point Northern European tarot decks substituted Juno and Jupiter for the Popess and Pope. Therefore (5) Juno and Jupiter, captives of love, are interchangeable with the Popess and Pope.

The problem is that the substitution happened three centuries after the invention of the tarot, in a different part of the continent. And nobody even knew about the precedent of Filippo's game then, and few that Jupiter had been depicted like a priest. The change to Jupiter was done only in areas of mixed Protestant and Catholic populations but under Catholic control; I would imagine the reason was to prevent fights breaking out over the Pope card. I cannot imagine it was done to caricature the Pope. As for the original "substitution", the Pope was never thought of as assuming the role of Jupiter, he with the weakness for nymphs. It was simply that Europeans, seeing Arab manuscripts, imagined Jupiter as a high priest (as opposed to imagining the Pope as Jupiter).

Moakley also has an argument about "Captain Fracasse" substituting for the Popess, that he is the natural enemy of Bagatino and his ilk in the Commedia dell'Arte. That again was centuries after the fact. Yes, he is introduced in a ribald manner. That does not make the Popess ribald, or the natural enemy of the Bagatino. Or a "captive of love".

All the same, I think it is possible to fix this problem. Here is one scenario. Moakley says that there were different variations of the deck before settling on 22 special cards, including at least one with 16 of them (plus or minus). So let us suppose that the Pope and Popess were not there originally, nor the Bagatella. None of the three, nor the Fool, are part of the surviving Cary-Yale. In a new game, illegal at first, card makers don't want trouble. With that supposition, there is just the Empress and the Emperor, united by Love, immediately following.

Then someone decides that there should be a card for the Pope, one that is higher than the Emperor to show the Pope's superiority to the Emperor, that the Pope "triumphs" over the Emperor. Then someone else has the idea to have a Popess, just like there is an Empress. Since there is no such person, this is a great way to add mystery to the game.

To some, it will be a joke about Joan. Pietro Aretino seemed to have her in mind when he had the cards say, in Le Carte Parlante (http://www.associazioneletarot.it/page.aspx?id=163&lng=ITA)

CAR: La papessa è per l’astuzia di quegli che defraudano il nostro essere con le falsità che ci falsificano

(CAR: The Popess means the shrewdness of those who defraud our being with falsehoods that falsify us.)

If the Pope is an imposter, then we are being cheated and even the sacraments are being mocked.
Pope Joan would also seem to be who the preacher of the Steele Sermon  had in mind, because he says:

La papessa (O miseri quod negat Christiana fides):
The Popess (O wretches! That which the Christian faith denies)

In "De Claris Mulieribus" (Of Famous Women), Alain Bougereal reminds me, Boccaccio writes:

Que tamen non verita ascendere Piscatoris cathedram et sacra ministeria omnia, nulli mulierum a christiana religione concessum, tractare agere at aliss exhibere...

"This woman was not afraid to mount the Fisherman's throne, to perform all the sacred offices, and to administer them to others (something that the Christian religion does not permit any woman to do)."

There seems to be a relationship. (On the other hand, Andrea Vitali reads it as possibly "O Wretches! who deny the Christian faith", where "wretches" aren't the people being addressed but those who deny the Christian faith. That is an unconvincing reading to me, to SteveM, and to Alain. The context is a denigration of the cards.)

In late 15th century Venice, there was even a "Triumph of Love" illustration that put a Popess in the scene (https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEmUqdmPly7MRm_i0JkO_56gQtSytRA021sFwKMqT-2GNzXHof52R24DwGF5JmZF42WD4yAJRD2Ro2Sj8f-zZIo1md4OejzsQwGIK4vFolW72hNrqYxYPuOEcalWC_BF4qyBVgO1zzYqfp/s600/joan-triumph-love-1488.jpg. The story was that Joan would have gotten away with her ruse, except that God made her fall in love with a young man and conceive his child. She gave birth during a procession, thus revealing her sex.

Others will think of popes' tendencies to have mistresses. To others it will be the marriage between the Pope and the Church, bound by spiritual love as well as canon law. To others, there is the Crowned Virgin, who was depicted often with a double crown and sometimes with a triple one.
 
 I even see a resemblance between Bembo Virgins and the Popess of their tarot:

Moreover, there was the cross-staff and book, traditionally associated to Wisdom or Prudence, and sometimes to Faith. Below, in a 13th century manuscript, she is Sapientia, Latin for Wisdom.
 
For Faith, see Giotto's "Faith" in Padua, where a scroll substitutes for the usual book (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/94/be/1f/94be1f6a5828eae902e334143671ae79.jpg).
Dummett hypothesized that the Popess took the place of the missing virtue Prudence.

There simply wasn't a standard convention then for what the word "Papessa" was meant to depict, or what a nun with a book and cross staff--or a woman dressed in papal regalia--with papal tiara meant. So to the Visconti descendants, as their private joke, it could be Manfreda, while at the same time, given the simple habit, the Church in its humility. Or perhaps  not a joke, but a question: why shouldn't a woman be allowed to be Pope? If one thinks of cards being added by degrees for specific purposes, even changing the depiction, the later ones ignoring the designer's original conception, there is no problem.

Another scenario: the inventor of the game might have had a personal grudge against the Pope. So he puts the Pope and Popess cards there together, next to the Emperor and Empress, to express his contempt for the papacy, which in his view is riddled with hypocrisy and mistresses. The inventor dies, and his friends, whom he has taught the game, want to win acceptability for it. They say that the Popess is the Church (or the Faith), bound to the Pope in love, as signified by the Love card, which is "softened" from Petrarch and not a matter of captivity but simply of mutual respect and devotion. The word "Papessa", and the depiction as a lady in a papal tiara, allow for flexibility in interpretation. When Bianca Maria has a chance to design her own deck, she seizes on the chance to suggest someone else, but ambiguously, so as not to offend.

Moakley's argument for Manfreda as the PMB Popess was defended by Dummett as an exercise in ribaldry but otherwise has tended to raise researchers' hackles: why should anyone even remember those events 150 years later, especially seeing as the details were kept secret? Did the Inquisition even make it public that Manfreda considered herself chosen to be Pope (or Popess)?

One answer might be that it wasn't just Matteo Visconti who was accused, but a series of papal bulls charging a series of Visconti rulers with heresy as a follower of Manfreda and Guglielma. It was just harassment, part of an effort to bring various rulers outside the pope's jurisdiction to heel. Such bulls were public record and fresh ones could be issued at any time. Potential victims needed to know about the threat, as much as possible.

Admittedly the bulls did not mention Manfreda as a would-be Pope. But there was an abridged record of the trial (our only source of that information) found in the 17th century in a grocery store in Pavia. Pavia is where the Visconti Library was kept, so somebody would have removed it before the French carted the library to Paris. If this text was owned by the Visconti, each generation could inform the next, with the document as proof. So it is reasonably likely that Bianca Maria Visconti in particular, as the daughter of the Duke, would be informed. Also, her uncle was the general of the Umiliati order, to which Manfreda had belonged.

Another problem is that the habit on the card corresponds to that of the Poor Clares (at left, detail from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Antonio_Colantonio, for which I thank "Phaeded" on Tarot History Forum); it is too light to correspond to the "dark brown" described in the trial document, and it has the three knots used by the Franciscans.

Part of an answer to that might be that it is close enough to make the association for those who know, without implicating the card maker or the commissioner in heresy or promoting it to those who are not personally connected with the family. It is like the Beatles song "Lucy in the sky with diamonds". Those who know such things can see the song as about LSD, even without a document from the Beatles to that effect.. Others can see it as about a girl named Lucy. Such double meanings are necessary when there is strong disapproval among people who matter of a particular reading. That's one reason for writing or painting allegories: multiple interpretations are possible, depending on what is important to and known by a particular audience. It also gives the publisher or distributor an excuse: the alleged interpretation was something they knew nothing about..

There is also the Fournier Museum's version of the card, showing her with the dark brown habit, corresponding closely to the description in the trial record (at near left, taken from M. M. Filesi's essay translated at (http://www.associazioneletarot.it/page. ... 72&lng=ENG):). That would have been later, when these new cards were under less scrutiny, due to a more liberal papacy (Alexander VI) or perhaps for someone not in such a politically sensitive position as the Sforza rulers of Mila.

The three knots on her belt also have an association to Manfreda and her followers. They are part of the trial record. Here is my translation of the Italian quoted by Filesi,

In this room in the presence of all the summoned people Sister Maifreda said that the lady St. Guglielma had ordained the sister Maifreda to say to all those present that she was the Holy Spirit, true God and true man, and that hence all the aforesaid there present would not have appeared in her presence [otherwise]. Added the aforementioned Sister Maifreda: "Let be for me what can be”. Allegranza also said to remember that the above mentioned lady Carabella in that house then sat on her own habit, and when she got up, she found that the belt or cord of her habit had made three knots that had not been there: and there grew around them then marveling and whispering among them, and many from this same testimony believed it to be a great miracle.

They don't say whether Manfreda would have started wearing her habit like that; probably not, since it would have attracted attention and not been in accord with Umiliati custom. But it is a good identifying detail, for those in the know. For those not in the know, or to the Inquisitors, it is a harmless identifier of a Poor Clare.

There is no proof that Bianca Maria did know all this, but it is a reasonable possibility, given the card and the family. It might be true, and it might not be. For details and references, see M. M. Filesi, cited previously, or me at http://popessofthetarot.blogspot.com/.
 
One further unclarity is that we don't know without further examination what shade of brown the robe on the card was originally, because the original color might have been painted over by the "second artist". Art historian Monike Dachs (Pantheon I, 1992, pp. 175-178, cited by Bendera in the 2013 Brera catalog, p. 52) has suggested that this card and others (Justice, Time, Page of Coins, Page of Batons) were retouched by the later artist (Cigognara, she says). The robe does look like the same type of paint and style as the "added cards". In that case, he would have done the whole brown part to look the same, and we wouldn't know what shade of brown the habit on the original was. He might have decided the habit had to have been that of a Poor Clare, due to the knots.

In any case, Moakley was not justified in simply stating her hypothesis as fact. It is one of the puzzling unknowns about the sequence.