Ross G. R.

Caldwell

Marziano da Tortona’s Tractatus de deificatione sexdecim heroum : Part 1

The subject of this paper was first discussed in The Playing Card in two articles by Franco Pratesi in 1989 (1), to
which the reader is referred. Pratesi’s papers concerned a manuscript from 1449 which described a unique early
15th century pack of cards. Although discovered and noted briefly by the art historian Paul Durrieu as early as
1895 (2), no historian of playing cards nor writers on tarot cards appears to have consulted the manuscript itself
until Pratesi in 1989.

Its importance for the history of playing cards is twofold. First, because of its early date, which must fall for
several reasons between 1412 and 1425 (3), the text in general yields insights into attitudes towards playing
cards within the first 40 or 50 years of their appearance in Italy; that is, within one lifetime. As such, taking into
account the several-decades earlier treatise of Brother John (“of Rheinfelden”)(4), it is the second earliest
description of the composition of a card-pack in Europe. Secondly, the text is specifically concerned with a very
unique pack, which its author, Marziano da Tortona,(5) claims to have been the idea of his employer, Filippo
Maria Visconti, 3rd duke of Milan, who gave the idea to Marziano to be more fully developed.

The structure of the entire deck looks like this (assuming 7 pips (based on Pratesi’s suggestion of a multiple of 4,
including the King – see further below)):

Virtue* Eagles King 1 5 9 13

1-7 of Eagles Jupiter Apollo Mercury Hercules
Riches Phoenices King 2 6 10 14
7-1 of Phoenices Juno Neptune Mars Aeolus
Continence Turtledoves King 3 7 11 15
1-7 of Turtledoves Pallas Diana Vesta Daphne
Pleasures Doves King 4 8 12 16
7-1 of Doves Venus Bacchus Ceres Cupid
*The word virtus implies physical as well as moral strength and character.

The purpose of the present article is mainly to introduce the text, which is given in its entirety for the first time in
a preliminary translation below (6). The following brief observations are intended to give an overview of the
Tractatus and a description of its contents (without repeating Pratesi’s observations), offering suggestions for
further discussion of playing-card issues raised by the work.

The text exists in one exemplar in Paris, bound in red velvet over wood boards, together with another work by a
different copyist, as Bibliothèque nationale lat. 8745A (7). The dedicatory letter by the Venetian provveditore (8)
Jacopo Antonio Marcello (9), dated November 12 (Pridie Idus Novembris) 1449, is to Queen Isabelle de
Lorraine (1410-1453), first wife of King René d’Anjou (10). In the letter, Marcello speaks of two packs of
“triumphs” – one, a gift given to him while he was beseiging Milan with Francesco Sforza in the winter of 1448-
1449, a pack which he does not describe in any detail; the second pack, as will be known to readers of Franco
Pratesi’s articles, was unique in several ways, and Marcello takes the trouble to describe it, and the difficulties he
surmounted in getting it, for Isabelle. By all indications he did in fact send his copy of Marziano’s book, and the
two packs of cards, to Isabelle who was then in the Château of Saumur (in the Loire region, near Angers). This
subject forms the main content of the introductory letter.

After the letter, Marcello has copied the Tractatus, which begins with Marziano’s preface for Filippo Maria
Visconti. Marziano gives the rationale, structure and brief guidelines for play with the pack.

Marziano rhetorically asks whether it be fitting for a serious and virtuous man to seek recreation in play; he
answers in the affirmative, so long as the subject of the game is worthy enough to keep the man’s mind on high
matters. Thus he offers the Duke this game.

The composition of the pack was of a singular type, suggested, as Marziano says, by Filippo Maria himself. It
was a “fourfold” pack (where the suit signs were distinct from the presumably widespread Latin-suited packs),
being four kind of birds appropriate to four moral qualities, at the head of each suit was its own “king”. In
addition, Filippo Maria and Marziano added a special “suit”, composed of 16 gods and heroes from the Roman
pantheon. This special suit was further distinguished in having two, independent ways of being arranged.
Although all of the cards of this group were higher than all of the cards of the other four suits (and thus entirely
distinct from them), they were related thematically, by divisions of four, to the four suits. Marziano first lists
them by rows, as in the table above, i.e. Jupiter, Apollo, Mercury and Hercules; next Juno, Neptune, Mars,
Aeolus, etc. Thus he is able to maintain the fourfold design of the deck, and divide the gods and heroes
according to the four moral themes. This order has nothing to do with the play, however, which depended on
counting them in an internal order, from 1 to 16, as Marziano lists them and describes them in the text (thus
effectively making them a distinct suit).

Finally, concerning the rules of the game, Marziano leaves a good deal to be desired. Marcello himself, in his
dedicatory letter to Isabelle de Lorraine, gives no indications for play. For him, the cards’ use, as objects of
beauty as well as intelligent design, is for intellectual and spiritual recreation. Marziano da Tortona however,
while allowing worthy subject matter to be a justification for playing, gives four brief guidelines which form the
rudiments of an actual game.

The first concerns the equality of the suits relative to one another. Thus no “bird” was inherently higher or lower
than another. This incidentally implies the existence of games where suits were ranked, suggesting perhaps the
principle of a trump suit.

The second announces the principle whereby the pips of two suits run from low to high, and two others from
high to low. Thus for example (although Marziano does not tell us how many pips he has in mind for his deck,
Pratesi made the logical suggestion that it might have been a multiple of 4, whether or not including the kings,
hence 48 or 52 cards total) the two suits of Eagles and Turtledoves run Ace low – 7 high, and the two suits
Phoenices and Doves run 7 low – Ace high.

The third guideline is that the king – it appears that there was only one court card per suit – of each suit is higher
than all the pips.

Finally, the order of the gods that Marziano gives in the Tractatus itself is a simple hierarchy of 1 (Jove) to 16
(Cupid). It seems clear from his instructions(11) that this numbering is to be taken as the fixed ranking for
purposes of play. Marziano thus gives us the first description of a permanent “trump” suit in a deck of cards,
which is the distinguishing feature of the later tarot pack. However, this simple interpretation seems to leave the
meaning of the “deification”, which appears to be the theme of the game, unaccounted for.

Pratesi suggests that the instructions might be translated: “The gods among themselves have to respect this law:
who first is noted lower down will be higher than all the following ones”, and interprets them to mean that the
first god played would become the highest, or “deified” for the game. However, this interpretation seems to me
to ignore the force of the word inferius: “…among themselves, the gods are to be held to this rule, that he who
will be first noted inferius, let him lead all following”. I can think of another, if somewhat unlikely,
interpretation. Taking inferius as “prior” or “at first”, it might mean “at the beginning of the game” - thus the
statement might be interpreted as referring to a presumed action, whereby “at first” someone is noted to be the
lowest, by either holding or playing the lowest god. This god would be counted the highest for the purposes of
the game, with the rest following in circular order (i.e. if 9 were the lowest god dealt or played, it would be
considered the highest for that round. In play, one would count from highest to lowest 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15,
16, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8). This sort of rule given for playing a trump suit is, however (as far as I know) unattested
in any extant game. It is a permanent trump suit, but the relative ranking of the trumps changes with each hand or
game. Moreover, for inferius to have this meaning, we would expect it at the beginning of the clause.

Marziano, in or before 1425, does not call this special suit or the card pack as a whole “triumphi” (although he
does use the word twice in the text, once in reference to Caesar’s Triumph in the chapter on Hercules, and once
to refer to the actions of the lowest card among the gods, Cupid, for whom human hearts are his “triumph”); but
Jacopo Antonio Marcello, the man who found and copied the text in 1449, does in fact call the cards “a new and
exquisite kind of triumphs”, at once both differentiating them from the other pack of triumphs he had mentioned
earlier, as well as indicating that he considered this pack, no doubt because of its special suit, to be a pack of
triumph cards (albeit a “new kind”). As Marcello’s letter seems to indicate, he has only recently heard of the first
kind of triumphs (which I think are probably those we would call tarots), so he probably does not know who
really invented them or when. According to the current state of knowledge, “chartexelle da trionffi”, first
mentioned in Ferrara in 1442, must have been invented as such not too long before that date. Thus, Filippo
Maria’s “new kind” of triumphs are actually as much as two decades older than the ones Marcello first mentions,
the pack he thought not worthy to be given to the Queen.
A discussion of Marziano’s mythological sources, the meaning of the birds, gods and heroes, and Filippo
Maria’s reason for choosing them, along with some peculiarities of their ordering, are certainly topics worthy of
investigation. With regards to the gods, for instance, we might note that all 12 of the Olympian gods are
included, except for Vulcan. Marziano instead retains an archaic Olympian, Vesta, who ceded her place to
Bacchus, whereas Vulcan always remained an Olympian. Can we explain why Marziano rejected Vulcan and
retained Vesta as well as Bacchus? A good hypothesis might be that he does so in order to maintain a balance
between the number of male and female gods as he has arranged them according to the four virtues and vices –
note that the virtues of Virtue and Virginity are occupied solidly by male and female gods respectively, while the
vices of Riches and Pleasures are mixed in gender; additionally Vesta is preeminently a virgin, and must be
included, and Bacchus is a perfect symbol for the vice of drunkenness, so that (with other considerations) there is
no place for Vulcan. Also, Marziano hints at structural considerations when he notes that because Mercury is a
conciliator, he has placed him 9th, the “fairly middle place” among the 16 gods. Many other such observations
could be made, although this introduction is not the place to explore them.

Thus, for the history of playing cards, the Tractatus de deificatione sexdecim heroum is interesting both in giving
a fairly full description of an early variant pack, as well as providing insight into the manner of play. These
considerations and others raise many issues, which can barely be discussed, much less settled, in the compass of
this brief introduction to the text itself.

Special thanks to Charlotte de Noël and the staff of the Western Manuscripts Collection (site Richelieu) of the
Biblothèque nationale de France.
_____________________________________

1. “The Earliest Tarot Pack Known”, The Playing Card XVIII/1 (August 1989) pp. 22-32 and XVIII/2
(November 1989) pp. 33-38. On the internet, at least two webpages discuss Pratesi’s work: Tom Tadfor-Little’s
“The Hermitage: Tarot History” (where I first became aware of Pratesi’s work, and became determined to find
the original document) http://www.tarothermit.com/marziano.htm ; and a very full account, a summary and
analysis supplemented with further information from personal communications from Pratesi, in “The Oldest
Tarot Cards” at http://trionfi.com/1test/NoFrame2.html, or http://trionfi.com (heading “Oldest Tarot”) by
Autorbis. One of Pratesi’s achievements was to demonstrate that the deck Marcello and Marziano describe in
Bibl. nat. lat. 8745A was the same as that which Pier Candido Decembrio mentions in chapter LXI of his Life of
Filippo Maria Visconti. Considering Marcello’s report about what he had heard, it is possible to infer a reference
to an earlier deck, in his statement that “… he gave (his plan for the deck) to (Marziano) to be built and
described; nor with this was that prince content; he summoned Michelino…” as an indication that Marziano
may have made a deck, as Decembrio describes, and that sometime afterwards Filippo Maria may have
commissioned a new edition from Michelino da Besozzo. Thus Michelino’s deck, the one found by Marcello and
sent to Isabelle, could have been painted anytime after 1425 and up to 1447; of course, Filippo Maria may have
had Michelino paint the deck earlier as well (after 1417 at the earliest, which is the year Michelino returned to
Milan after at least 7 years travelling, including a long stay in Venice).

2. Paul Durrieu discovered the text while conducting research on the career of Michelino da Besozzo, and
published his longest account of it in “Michelino da Besozzo et les relations entre l’art Italien et l’art Français à
l’époque du régne de Charles VI”, in Mémoires de l’institut nationale de France, Académie des inscriptions et
belles-lettres tom. 38 pt. 2 (Paris, 1911, pp. 365-393) pp. 376-377. He writes “I was the first to draw attention to
this curious text, in a communication made to the Société nationale des Antiquaires de France on March 13 1895
(in the Bulletin of this Société for 1895, p. 117)”(“Michelino da Besozzo”, p. 377 note 1). Unfortunately, his
description of the deck was deficient, as he described it only as “sixteen cards”, and failed to mention both that it
was part of a larger pack, and that the gods were numbered from 1 to 16, (with the groupings by four for
descriptive purposes only); moreover, he neglected to mention the name of the author of the text of the Tractatus
following Marcello’s dedicatory letter, although he describes Marziano’s Tractatus as “une explication très
ampoulée” (an extremely bombastic explanation) of Michelino’s lost deck (“Michelino da Besozzo”, p. 377).
Subsequent commentators such as Gertrude Moakley (The Tarot Cards Painted By Bonifacio Bembo For The
Visconti-Sforza Family (New York, New York Public Library, 1966) pp. 46 and 56, note 10), Stuart Kaplan (The
Encyclopedia of Tarot, (New York, 1978) p. 40) and Michael Dummett (The Game of Tarot, (London,
Duckworth, 1980) p. 33 note 2 and p. 82, note 44) repeated Durrieu’s deficient description, which was only
corrected by Pratesi in 1989.

3. Marziano (see note 5) addresses the Tractatus to Duke Filippo Maria, who only became de facto Duke of
Milan in 1412. Prior to that, his only title had been Count of Pavia; Marziano died in 1425.
4. For Brother John’s “Playing Cards Moralised” see now Arne Jönssen, “Der Ludus cartularum moralisatus des
Johannes von Rheinfelden” in Schweizer Spielkarten 1: Die Anfänge im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert (Schaffhausen,
1998), pp. 135-147; this paper is summarized and reviewed by Autorbis at http://www.trionfi.com/01/e/

5. Marziano’s full name was Marziano Rampini da Sant’ Alosio. He was born around 1370. He was a highly
regarded scholar in humanistic circles of his age. According to Gasparino Barzizza, who pronounced Marziano’s
funeral oration, he studied in Pavia, Padua, Bologna and Florence, and in very general terms Barzizza called him
doctissimo, a “most learned man”. From Filippo Maria’s biographer Pier Candido Decembrio, we learn that he
was in charge of the prince’s humanistic education, reading Petrarch, Dante and Livy. In holy Orders, he became
secretary for Pope Gregory XII (Correr), before being appointed ducal secretary by Filippo Maria in 1412. His
reputation as an astronomer/astrologer seems to depend on Marcello, and seems confirmed by astronomical
references in Marziano’s text itself; such an expertise is not mentioned by Decembrio or Barzizza. Marziano died
in 1425. On Marziano da Tortona, the fullest account in English remains Stuart Kaplan, “The Encyclopedia of
Tarot” vol. II, pp. 147-148; in Italian, see now Edoardo Fumagalli, “Marziano da Tortona” in Ettore Cau, Franco
Fagnanno and Valeria Moratti, eds., Il Tortonese: Album del II Millennio (Tortona; Rotary Club Tortona, 2001)
pp. 125-136, (includes bibliography): Fumagalli discusses Decembrio’s passage at length, and also notes that
Barzizza implies that Marziano was a painter, although an amateur; see also the paper by Ugo Rozzo in the same
volume, who discusses Marziano on pp. 202-203. Neither Fumagalli nor Rozzo were aware of the existence of
the Tractatus de deificatione, showing that playing-card research has something to offer the study of the Italian
quattrocento and the field of humanities in general. Marziano’s nephew Enrico Rampini was a churchman,
becoming Archbishop of Milan from 1443-1450, and created a cardinal in 1446. He apparently remained close to
Filippo and the Visconti family.

6. A full edition of the original Latin text, with translation and commentary, is in preparation.

7. For a detailed notice of the manuscript see Charles Samaran and Robert Marichal eds., Catalogue des
manuscrits en écriture latine portant des indications de date, de lieu ou de copiste (Paris, CNRS, 1974) t. III, p.
79 and Plate CLV. The text was first catalogued by Guillaume Petit in 1518, in King François I’s library at Blois:
see Omont, H., Anciens inventaires de la Bibliothèque nationale (Paris, 1910) p. 101. Petit notes both Marziano’s
Tractatus and the following work in the codex, Paulus Vergerius De liberalibus studiis ac ingenuis moribus,
indicating that they had already been bound together by 1518, perhaps among the 126 volumes bound in velvet
over wood boards by Gilles Hannequin in 1504 (for details see L.V. Delisle, Le Cabinet des manuscrits de la
Bibliothèque imperiale (nationale) (Paris, 1868) t. 1, p. 122 nn. 6 and 7; cf. Denise Bloch “La formation de la
bibliothèque du roi” in André Vernet ed., Histoire des bibliothèques françaises: tome 1, les bibliothèques
medievales du 6eme siècle à 1530 (Paris, Le Cercle de la Librairie, 1994) p. 125 and note 92). The history of the
Tractatus along with Marcello’s letter, and the fate of the two decks of cards between 1449 and 1518, is
unknown. In his study of King René d’Anjou’s library (Le Roi René (Paris, 1875) t. II pp. 182-197), A. Lecoy de
la Marche notes that when René’s library was moved from the Château of Angers to Aix in 1471, some chests of
notebooks remained locked and were not catalogued (ibid. p. 184). In addition the Tractatus, which by itself is a
mere 32 small folio pages (20.4 X 13.8 cm) in four quaternions, is a negligible 0.5 cm in thickness when
flattened; it is easy to see how it might have escaped the notice of cataloguers. Of course, any number of other
things might have happened to the book and the cards between 1449, Isabelle’s death in 1453, and the library’s
relocation in 1471. We might propose a scenario in which the book went from Isabelle to René (1453), then to
René’s named heir, his nephew Charles of Maine (1480), who, dying in 1481, left the claims of Anjou, Provence
and Maine to King Louis XI of France. Thus most of Rene’s books ended up in the collection of King of France.
Louis’ collection was held at the Castle of Amboise, through the reign of Louis’ son Charles VIII. The crown of
France passed to the Orléans branch, and when Louis XII of Orléans married King Charles’ widow in 1499, he
inherited Charles’ library, which was moved to Blois around 1501, where it was catalogued by Guillaume Petit in
1518.

8. The military-politcal office of provveditore is thus explained by King (Death of the Child Valerio Marcello, p.
80; see note 9 below): “Venetians hired generals to war for them, they did not in their own persons lead armies
on the terrafirma. At the side of each hired general stood an official who was part supervisor, part spy, part
paymaster – the provveditore. It was this unglamorous position that Marcello held almost without interruption for
twenty-six years. The position had real importance. In the course of fifteenth century, provveditori would help
mold a professional army that constituted an important development in the military history of Europe. The
provveditorial system enable Venice to tame the notorious figure of the condottiere, making that hired
commander relatively loyal and efficient. An advisor, rather than a fighter (one of his duties was to pay the
troops, at any cost, on time), the provveditore did bear arms and travel with cavalry escort.”
9. For Jacopo Antonio Marcello, see now Margaret L. King, The Death of the Child Valerio Marcello (Chicago
and London, University of Chicago Press, 1994). This moving work contains the fullest biography of Marcello in
any language, including a 73-page chronology and an exhaustive bibliography (up to 1994). King has briefly
descrbed what is known about the scene in January-February 1449: “In these months, together with René’s
intimate, the Neapolitan Giovanni Cossa … Marcello and Sforza stood outside Milan. Apparently they
succeeded in raiding that city, or at least in procuring through willing intermediaries from among the Visconti
spoils a set of illuminated playing cards which Marcello dispatched to Isabelle of Lorraine, wife of the Angevin
king.” (p. 110).

10. For the profound relationship between René d’Anjou and Jacopo Antonio Marcello, see King op. cit. passim
and bibliography, and A. Lecoy de la Marche (op. cit., t.I pp. 273-336, and. t.II, pp. 180-188). King had not seen
Marcello’s dedicatory letter to the Tractatus; in private communication to me she noted that she could shed no
further light on how Marcello got the cards (i.e. which “intermediaries” might have helped him), nor on the
identity of the otherwise unknown “Scipio Caraffa”.

11. Sed inter se dii hac lege tenebuntur : quod qui prior inferius annotabitur, sequentibus omnibus praesit – “But
among themselves the gods are to be held to this rule : being that who first will be noted below, should lead all
those following.”