B10 - B12: Temperanza, Fortezza, Justizia

B10. Temperanza.

The three explicit virtue cards in the tarot are Temperance, Fortitude, and Justice, in that order in the earliest lists (see the "archaic orderings" at http://l-pollett.tripod.com/cards26.htm). They are virtues of the body, the spirited part, and the mind, respectively. That division of the soul is Plato's, Republic 439-440 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_tripartite_theory_of_soul). He has Temperance for the body, centered in the belly and below, Fortitude for the spirited part, centered in the heart, and Wisdom for the mind. Justice, the right relationship between the three, is also discerned by the mind rather than the other two. In these early orders, however, Justice was put up on one side or the other of Judgment (then called "Angelo", the Angel). to signify divine Justice rather than the human kind, which often is swayed by the other parts of the soul.

In later lists of the tarot trumps, however, Justice was at number 8, followed by Fortitude somewhat later, and Temperance as the one on the other side of death, at number 14. That order continued in Noblet c. 1650 and in the Marseille-style decks thereafter. Here I will take them in their most straightforward order, corresponding to Plato's.

 The Temperance card is typically of a woman pouring from one vessel into another (images of the card are a few paragraphs below). From a Dionysian perspective, it shows water diluting wine. Cartari cites Athenaeus, who in turn cites Diodorus. This citation combines two passages in Diodorus. One is in  IV.3 of his History

For the drinking of unmixed wine results in a state of madness, but when it is mixed with the rain from Zeus the delight and pleasure continue, but the ill effect of madness and stupor is avoided

The other is in  IV.5:

He was thought to have two forms, men say, because there were two Dionysi, the ancient one having a long beard because all men in early times wore long beards, the younger one being youthful and effeminate and young, as we have mentioned before. Certain writers say, however, that it was because men who become drunk get into two states, being either joyous or sullen, that the god has been called "two-formed".

It is no contradiction that "two formed" applies to various opposites: not only joyous and sullen, but also young and old, male and female.

In Egypt, Seth and Osiris were opposites, as Plutarch presents them: Osiris was beneficial and a source of order, Seth harmful and the spirit of disorder. Seth's color, he tells us, was red, while Osiris's was black. Black doesn't get us anywhere, as far as the imagery of the card. But he also symbolized the Nile flood, the rising water fertilizing Isis as the land. (I surmise that the blackness was the water coming down from Ethiopia on the Blue Nile, which looked almost black). Osiris as water, of course, does relate to our card. Blue is the color most often associated with water, and they are the two colors on the dress of the lady pouring the water (above, the PMB, d'Este, Noblet, and Conver; the color that appears black in the Noblet is blue that has faded, as Flornoy restores the card at http://www.tarot-history.com/Jean-Noblet/pages/lemperance.html). .Combining them, we get the mixture of good and evil that we see in our world, and which Euripides said was as it should be. It is also Seth's disordering energy moderated by the calm order of Osiris.Osiris without Seth would be dull and tasteless. Seth without Osiris would be chaos.

Plutarch associates Isis as the goddess of temperance, Of Isis and Osiris 2 (http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Isis.html):

 ...for she is both wise, and a lover of wisdom; as her name appears to denote that, more than any other, knowing and knowledge belong to her. For “Isis” is a Greek word, and so is “Typhon,” her enemy, for he is “puffed up” by want of knowledge and falsehood, and tears to pieces, and puts out of sight, the sacred word which the goddess again gathers up and puts together, and gives into the charge of those initiated into the religion; whilst by means of a perpetually sober life, by abstinence from many kinds of food and from venery, she checks intemperance and love of pleasure, accustoming people to endure her service with bowels not enervated by luxury, but hardy and vigorous...

Here she represents both Temperance and Wisdom. We might expect Plutarch to associate her with Fortitude and Justice as well; that will indeed be the case.

Another meaning for the card is suggested by the text used for Titian's Bacchanal of the Andreans,: the wine was "heavenly" and likened to the nectar of the gods. Thus a jar of it in the painting is lifted toward the sky. Likewise wine is part of the sacrament of the Christian Eucharist, flowing from God and mixed with equally celestial water. In that sense, the lady on the card might be preparing the Eucharist that forgives sin and symbolizes the eternal life promised to the believer.

In Egypt, the White Nile was the stream laden with nutrients, whitish in color from the clay it picked up, while the Blue Nile was the stream that came with few nutrients but great volume in July and August. The combination produced the rebirth of the land, both from because of the water and the nutrients. It is a physical parallel to the Christian Eucharist, wine mixed with water and then with the communion wafer.

This analysis of wine as the liquid of the Eucharist takes on more meaning in a Greco-Roman context if we consider the lady doing the pouring as the goddess Hebe. She was the cup-bearer of the gods before Hercules came to Olympus, when she married him. Even then, she sometimes took over temporarily from her replacement, Ganymede. Here is Homer in Iliad 4:1 (http://www.theoi.com/Ouranios/Hebe.html):

Now the gods at the side of Zeus were sitting in council over the golden floor, and among them the goddess Hebe (Youth) poured them nectar and wine, while they in the golden drinking-cups drank to each other, gazing down on the city of the Trojans.

She was also famous for having a shrine where escaped slaves and prisoners could go; if they made it there and prayed to the goddess, they would win their freedom. Pausanias, writing about this shrine, says (http://www.theoi.com/Ouranios/Hebe.html):

Of the honours that the Phliasians pay to this goddess the greatest is the pardoning of suppliants. All those who seek sanctuary here receive full forgiveness, and prisoners, when set free, dedicate their fetters on the trees in the grove. 

This story is also cited in Cartari, 1581, with a picture (1581 edition, http://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateot/ca...1/jpg/s038.html).

It appears that she has a cup in each hand. And you can see the prisoners' fetters hanging from the trees. She has the power to forgive transgressions. Since that is what the Eucharist is about, it would make sense to put her on the card, if that is one meaning of the scene there.

In that case, it would also make sense to put Temperance after the Death card, as the Eucharist is what has the power to overcome death. The earliest lists have Temperance below Death. Yet starting in the second quarter of the 16th century, and continuing in the Marseille decks, Temperance is number 14, just above death. If she is Hebe the cup-bearer, we have an explanation of why, of all the cards below Death that there were, it was Temperance that got elevated. 

The only problem I see with this attribution is that in the Marseille cards the lady pouring the liquid has wings. I find no description in classical or Renaissance literature and art portraying Hebe in that way. Nike and Iris were, e.g. by Aristophanes, Birds 574 (trans. O'Neill):

Hermes is a god and has wings and flies, and so do many other gods. First of all, Nike (Victory) flies with golden wings, Eros (Love) is undoubtedly winged too, and Iris is compared by Homer to a timorous dove.

Iris was the female equivalent of Mercury, a messenger of the gods. She played some role in conveying souls to the land of the dead, notably separating Dido's soul from her body; that could perhaps give Iris a place between the Death card and the Devil card.  Nike, meaning victory, is also possible, if Temperance is a victory for the spirit and the Eucharist a victory over death. Artists were known to synthesize elements from different gods or goddesses. For example, Durer did a Nemesis standing on a globe, which is an attribute of Fortune. My hypothesis is that in the Marseille decks she combines Hebe with the wings of Nike or Iris: Hebe as cup-bearer, Nike as the victory over death that the two jugs represent in a Christian setting, Iris as the goddess affecting the transition to the next card.

In the earlier decks, there is no problem associating her with Hebe. In none of the PMB, the d'Este, and the Cary Sheet does she have wings (left to right below). Nor even in the Catelin Geoffrey (far right);. that card is in fact the closest to Hebe, as she is actually pouring a liquid into a container that could be drunk out of. The first winged Temperance that I know of is Noblet. 


B11. Fortezza.

"Fortezza" is one of the four cardinal  virtues of the Church, Fortitude. The lady with the lion was one conventional image of that virtue. In the Marseille decks, however, the title is "La Force". But in Italy as early as 1627 Folengo used the Italian equivalent, "Forza"--as well as "Fortezza"--in his "tarocchi sonnets" (http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Caos_Del_Triperuno).Here is the first of four in which he uses five titles four times each, in this case to give advice to a lady who, in the larger work, drew these cards. I highlight the relevant words:

Questa fortuna al mondo è 'n Bagattella,
ch'or quinci altrui solleva, or quindi abbassa.
Non è Tempranzia in lei, però fracassa
la forza di chi nacque in prava Stella.

Sol una temperata forte e bella
donna, che di splendor le Stelle passa,
la instabil Rota tien umile e bassa;
e 'n gioco lei di galle al mondo appella.

Costei tempratamente sua Fortezza
usato ha sempre, tal che 'l Mondo e 'nsieme
la sorte de le Stelle a scherzo mena.

 Ben può fortuna con sua leggerezza
ir ne le Stelle di più forze estreme:
chi sa temprarsi lei col Mondo affrena.

(Fortune in the world is like a Juggler,
who now rises someone, and than brings him down.
There is no Temperance in it, so it crushes
the strength of whoever was born under a bad Star.


Only a tempered, strong and beautiful
woman, whose splendour surpasses that of the Stars,
can make the unstable Wheel humble and low;
and she calls it to world a game of acorns.

She has always used her Strength
in a temperate way, so that she can make fun
of the World and of the chance of the Stars.

Fortune, with its carelessness, can well
use the Stars of the most extreme strength:
who can temper himself will stop it as well as the World.)

 And here is its use in the fifth and final sonnet, which uses all 22 titles:

 — Per qual Giustizia — disse — a te si rese
né Papa mai né, s'è, Papessa alcuna? —
Rispose: — Chi col Sol fece la Luna
tolse centra mie Forze lor difese.

([Death] said: no Pope nor Papesse was ever won
by you. Do you call this Justice?
[Love] answered: Him who made the Sun and the Moon
defended them from my Strength.)

Andrea's essay on the card (http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=123&lng=ENG; see also original in Italian) gives numerous examples where fortezza in the Middle Ages meant both "fortitude" and "strength". Several 15th century designs, moreover, imply physical as well as moral strength: the PMB card for the Sforza (at left below) shows a man beating a lion, probably a representation of Hercules and the Nemean Lion. Other cards, such the Charles VI (at right, probably 15th century), show a woman toppling a column. In the "Mantegna" image of c. 1470 (center) there is a lion nearby; both reference Samson, famous for his physical strength.

 Dionysus and his Bacchantes also had that strength. People in frenzies in fact were sometimes observed not only to be bolder, but also to have unusual strength, as when Cartari observes "wine drunk out of measure makes man terrible and irascible". It is compared to that of wild animals and found even fiercer than a lion. In Euripides' Bacchae, the Maenads tear Pentheus to pieces and eat him raw, thinking that he is a wild beast, even a lion. Agive says, starting in line 1210 (http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/euripides/euripides.htm):

We caught this beast by hand, tore it apart
with our own hands. But where's my father?
He should come here. And where's Pentheus?
Where is my son? He should take a ladder,
set it against the house, fix this lion's head
way up there, high on the palace front.
I've captured it and brought it home with me.

Besides this animalistic power, Dionysus had the power to tame wild animals, like the woman with the lion on the Marseille style cards (Noblet at right below), a motif present as early as the Cary-Yale (left) and repeated in the fragmengary Cary Sheet image (center):

Dionysus had a similar power. In Renaissance depictions of the animals drawing his chariot, panthers and tigers are ubiquitous; in the Titian Bacchus and Ariadne for Alfonso (http://www.cgfaonlineartmuseum.com/titian/p-titian11.htm) they are cheetahs; Alfonso had a pair in his private zoo.

However there is an evidently tame lion in the engraving of the painting done after Raphael's cartoon of Bacchanal with Indian Elephants (http://www.1st-art-gallery.com/thumbnail/372461/1/The-Triumph-Of-Bacchus-In-India.jpg), probably inspired by a similar lion on one of the ancient sarcophagi, as drawn in 1480 by an unknown Bolognese artist.(reproduced by Sheard on p 318 of Titian 500, edited by Manco). Lions of course would not have been brought back from India; but nonetheless it is an impressive addition to the Bacchanal.

I found online one Roman sarcophagus of lionesses drawing the chariot of Dionysus and Ariadne, of which this is the relevant part

The way Bacchus and Ariadne look at each other is the same sort mutual enthrallment as in Titian's painting, and which Lorenzo di Medici put into verse c. 1475, which I have already quoted:

Quest’è Bacco ed Arïanna,             Here are Bacchus and Ariadne,
belli, e l’un de l’altro ardenti:             Handsome, and burning for each other:
perché ’l tempo fugge e inganna,     Because time flees and fools,
sempre insieme stan contenti.             They stay together always content.

I found this translation at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Loves_of_the_Gods_(Carracci), accompanying yet another version of the couple in the chariot, an Antonio Caracchi 1597.

Another indication of Dionysus's power to tame those who are wild is given by Cartari. He says that ivy is sacred to Bacchus because he ties up and restrains those whose anger is likely to hurt others, just as the plant encircles whatever it is with. In Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne, there is a man with serpents wrapped around him. This detail is in Cateullus's poem, but art historians have no suggestions for what it means. The man is quite similar to the one in Correggio's Allegory of Vice (or Silenus, or Allegory of the Passions, as Campbell prefers).

 As art historians have observed, both are similar to the Laoccon statue that had been found in 1506, showing this defyer of the gods being punished for his impudence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Laocoon_Pio-Clementino_Inv1059-1064-1067.jpg). What makes the image Dionysian, I think, is tha tthe snakes are like ivy, restraining an overwrought man.

In these various depictions of Dionysus and his band, in drama and in painting, it is again the allegorical theme of the power of wine to bring amiability in moderation and violence in excess.

In Egypt, the lion was the animal of the Sun God, Ra or Re. I cannot find any Greek source describing her winning him or a lion to her side, although there may well be one, since modern accounts describe how she used his own spittle to bend him to her will. The closest match is in Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 19,  is her success in winning the gods' support in recognizing Horus's legitimacy as king of all Egypt. But as Plutarch presents it, Thoth is the one who does the influencing. So conceivably the card could represent Ra, as chief of the gods, submitting to Isis under the here unseen influence of Thoth.

B12. Justizia.


Justice originally was simply the traditional figure that illustrated that cardinal virtue of the Church. Above are the PMB of Milan in the 1450s, the Sforza Castle card, c. 1600, and the Charles VI, of sometime 1460-1480, of somewhere betwen Florence and Ferrara. As you can see, she was number 20 in that deck, the next to last in the sequence. The early lists have her either as 20th or 19th. She appears at number 8 in some early lists, those of the anonymous Motti alle signore di Pavia sotto il titolo dei tarocchi (http://l-pollett.tripod.com/cards26.htm), 2nd quarter of the 16th century, and that of Alciati, 1444; he was from Milan and was living in Lombardy at the time he made his list, although he had recently been in France. (Andy's Playing cards also has Aretino, Le Carte Parlante of 1521 However I have looked there and don't see a definite order.) And of course she is number 8 in the Marseille tarots.

You will notice that in the early versions she does not have wings. Cartari, too, presents her without wings.
 
 In the Noblet version, however, she does have wings (like Temperance but unlike La Force). This didn't last long: the "Chosson" removed them, a practice continued by Conver.

It is the Noblet, I think, that best captures the Dionysian goddess of Justice. Her name was Nemesis. She was the great equalizer, the one who brings the mighty down in Greek tragedy, an art under the patronage of Dionysus. In Garzoni's Hospital of Incurable Madness, perhaps not coincidentally, Nemesis was the goddess associated with the "tarocco madmen" (See Andrea's essay on that work, at http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=109&lng=eng.)

In Cartari, Nemesis, unlike Justice, is depicted with wings, at least when she is rewarding the good, in this Cartari 1647 edition woodcut of her, on the left below:

The perception of Nemesis as winged might be based on Pausanias' comments about a statue of her by Pheidias (quoted on http://www.theoi.com/Daimon/Nemesis.html)

[1.33.7] Neither this nor any other ancient statue of Nemesis has wings, for not even the holiest wooden images of the Smyrnaeans have them, but later artists, convinced that the goddess manifests herself most as a consequence of love, give wings to Nemesis as they do to Love. 

As punisher of the bad, she also is shown with a wheel, perhaps similar to the Wheel of Fortune, as she gives her victims a reversal of fortune. This is perhaps based on knowledge of Roman sculptures of the goddess, such as the one pictured at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nemesis_Getty_Villa_96.AA.43.jpg. This one, true to Pausanias' comment, is depicted with wings.

In Greek tragedies, of which Dionysus was the patron, the reversal happens at the end of the play, when the protagonist suffers in consequence of his character flaws. Similarly, Justice was put at the end of the tarot sequence in all the early lists.  From a Christian perspective, it is that by which those who do not measure up are excluded from Paradise. But in the "Marseille" order Justice appears earlier, which befits a happy ending: the high-flying charioteer is laid low by Justice as Nemesis, after which true initiation beings.

For Plutarch, Justice is simply again Isis, Of Isis and Osiris 3 (http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Isis.html):

 ...of the Muses at Hermopolis they call the foremost one “Isis,” and “Justice-Wisdom,” as hath been stated..

This might be another reason for Noblet's giving her wings. Plutarch says she took the form of a swallow. The light, fleshly color in the Noblet Justice's midrift might have been meant to suggest bare skin; that is certainly the way Flornoy interpreted it in his restoration, below. Since there are no nipples, one is free to make one's own interpretation.

 There is also the sign of Scales as it was in the Dendera sodiacs (middle above, from Desroches-Noblecourt, Le Fabuleux Heritage de l'Egypte p. 331). One of these images showed a bird above the fulcrum of the balance. That could have been Isis, based on the Greek texts known by 1650. Another showed a boy with his finger in his mouth. This would have been Isis's second son, Horus the Younger or Harpocrates. At Dendera he seems to be the agent of Justice. His position above the balance is strangely like that of the knight above Justice in the PMB. In chivalric romances knights frequently came to the aid of towns or maidens afflicted by dragons and other oppressors.