No less a figure than Cardinal Bessarion, just after mid-century, defended the idea of keeping the most sacred things secret from the common people, in the context of defending Plato (Calumniator Platonus 2.8 (1457-69), quoted in Hankins Plato in the Italian Renaissance, 256:
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| Plato therefore wrote nothing down relating to primary and supreme realities—or very little, and that in a very obscure way—because he felt it impermissible to share such high matters with the multitude, and he thought it far holier to worship and venerate such realities with his whole mind... |
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| Il cardinale Bessarione saluta Demetrio e Andronico, figli del sapiente Gemisto. Ho appreso che il nostro comune padre e maestro ha deposto ogni spoglia terrena e se n'è andato in cielo, al sito di ogni purità, per unirsi al coro della mistica danza di Jacco [id est il Dioniso dei Misteri di Eleusi - ndr] con gli dèi olimpici. (http://www.ritosimbolico.net/studi2/studi2_22.html) |
Such language, in Plato as well as in the accounts of the Mysteries, helped to express the sense of mystery and ecstasy that Bessarion associated with the Christian hereafter. Thus also, I am suggesting, are the Greco-Roman and Greco-Egyptian “mysteries” to be found by the wise in the tarot, themselves expressions of hidden Christian mysteries.
In the 1460s Ficino started studying Plotinus. He published his translation, with commentary, in 1492. Since Bessarion was Greek and had his own manuscript collection, this Plotinus passage might have been what stimulated him to say, in his polemical work defending Plato published in 1468, that he preferred to “venerate such mysteries with his whole mind,” as opposed to the discursive, piece by piece analysis of non-symbolic prose. Here is Plotinus:
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| The Egyptian sages...drew pictures and carved one picture for each thing in their temples, thus making manifest the description of that thing. Thus each picture was a kind of understanding and wisdom and substance and given all at once, and not discursive reasoning and deliberation” (in Wittkower, "Hieroglyphics in the Early Renaissance,” p. 116 of his Allegory and the Migration of Symbols. Wittkower's footnote: Gombrich: "Icones Symbolicae: the Visual image in Neoplatonic Thought," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes XI 1948, p. 172.) |
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| The Egyptian priests, when they wished to signify divine signs, did not use minute characters or letters, but rather whole figures of plants, trees, animals: for God doubtless has a knowledge of such things which is not complex discursive thought about its subject, but is, as it were, the simple and permanent form of things.... (Curran p. 97). |
Ficino's colleague Politiano was studying this same material: besides Plotinus, there were Iamblichus and Proclus. Politiano’s interest is not known directly. But Valeriano, 1556, cited him as “among the most distinguished early students of hieroglphyics” (Charles Dempsey, “Renaissance Hierglyphic Studies and Gentile Bellini’s Saint Mark Preaching in Alexandria,” p. 347, in Hermeticism and the Renaissance: Intellectual History and the Occult in Early Modern Europe).
From 1465-1485, Giorgio Valla, educated in Milan, was at Pavia, part of the time tutoring the sons of Francesco Sforza, also translating much Greek sources into Latin, per Italian Wikipedia (http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgio_Valla). According to Dempsey (p. 344), his translations included Horapollo and Herodotus. His translation of Horapollo is now in the Biblioteca Trivulziana, Milan, ms. 2154, according to Roberto Weiss (The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity, p. 155).
On a famous tile in the pavement of Siena Cathedral, Hermes Trismegistus was shown holding a book of heiroglyphics, 1476.
Alberti’s book on architecture, containing the passage on hieroglyphics, was published in 1485.
In the 1480s, Weiss reports, there was a great demand for ancient Roman coins. Matteo Boiardo, for example, takes pains to ensure that his master Ercole d'Este knows about a recent discovery around that time.
In 1486 Pico della Mirandola wrote in his Oration about sayings that needed to be kept secret from the many but with enough clues to be understood by the few.
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| Openly to reveal to the people the hidden mysteries and the secret intentions of the highest divinity, which lay concealed under the hard shell of the law and the rough vesture of language, what else could this be but to throw holy things to dogs and to strew gems among swine? The decision, consequently, to keep such things hidden from the vulgar and to communicate them only to the initiate, among whom alone, as Paul says, wisdom speaks, was not a counsel of human prudence but a divine command. And the philosophers of antiquity scrupulously observed this caution. Pythagoras wrote nothing but a few trifles which he confided to his daughter Dama, on his deathbed. The Sphinxes, which are carved on the temples of the Egyptians, warned that the mystic doctrines must be kept inviolate from the profane multitude by means of riddles. Plato, writing certain things to Dionysius concerning the highest substances, explained that he had to write in riddles ``lest the letter fall into other hands and others come to know the things I have intended for you.'' Aristotle used to say that the books of the Metaphysics in which he treats of divine matters were both published and unpublished. Is there any need for further instances? (http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Mirandola/ ) |
In the 1480s-90s, Filippo Beroaldo Sr. lectured in Bologna, distributing an abridged version of Horapollo to students. This perhaps came from Michele Ferrarini, who composed a manuscript showing copies of hieroglyphs from obelisks, late 1480’s (photo from manuscript, Curran p. 102). Weiss (p. 155) and others surmised that these came from Cyriaco, who had also brought with him an abridged Horapollo (Curran p. 104). Beroaldo’s lectures probably included Apuleius on hieroglyphics, judging from his book on Apuleius published in 1500, which quotes from Apuleius’ account in his Metamorphoses (Curran p. 180f).
One influential account of hieroglyphs was by the learned Dominican monk Annius of Viterbo; his analysis of the “Herculean tablet” (Curran p. 124f, citing Weiss, “An Unknown Epigraph, ” Italian Studies presented to E. R. Vincent 1962, pp. 101-120, also his Renaissance discovery of classical antiquity. 1988.). This tablet was not, as Annius claimed, an Etruscan memorial to Osiris, but in fact his own assemblage of a 12th-13th century relief inserted into a 15th century frame, which was then put into an Etruscan tomb to be “discovered” at the time of the Pope’s visit to Viterbo in the fall of 1493. According to Annius, the tree in the center was Osiris’s scepter, the branches signifying his rule over every part of the world, and the faces at the top were Osiris and his female cousin, “Sais Xantho, Muse of Egypt.” The Viterbo town government accepted his account enthusiastically, and Vasari later as well. Its pictorial remoteness from the hieroglyphs on obelisks testifies to the broad understanding of the concept during the Renaissance.
The explanation in Latin was put there in the 1580’s on the occasion of its placement in Viterbo’s Palazzo Comunale. It reads, according to Curran
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| The Senate and People of Viterbo have erected here this very ancient marble, inscribed with hieroglyphs about the victory of Osiris against the Giants, in this temple, at one time dedicated to Hercules and now dedicated to Saint Lawrence, in order to preserve the monuments and glory of our very ancient fatherland. |
Most Renaissance emulation of Egyptian hieroglyphs made no attempt to look Egyptian. They used pictures of ordinary objects, of the type mentioned by Horapollo, to create an enigmatic scene. I think that some examples of high art were stimulated by the interest in and demand for hieroglyphs. An example is Giorgione’s Tempest of 1506-1508 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tempest_(Giorgione)), which represents a woman suckling a baby (a personification of Nature?) surrounded by the four elements, a soldier, ruins, a stork, etc. Leonardo da Vinci also painted hieroglyphs, for example the ermine in the famous Krakow portrait of Ludovico Sforza’s mistress. Some said the ermine was a symbol of purity; Leonardo wrote in his diary that the ermine symbolized self-control; it could also be a play on the lady’s name (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_with_an_Ermine). The image is one whose meaning is concealed from the many, thus qualifying as a hieroglyph. The enigmatic features of many of Leonardo’s paintings provide occasion for speculation even today (and not just in the Da Vinci Code). There is also the enigmatic face of the Mona Lisa, and the enigma of Gabriel’s pointing at John rather than Jesus in his first version of “Madonna of the Rocks.” Why was a second version painted, the one accepted by the confraternity that sponsored it, that removed this feature?
In 1499 the Hypnerotomachia, Strife of Love in a Dream, was published anonymously. Who wrote it is currently a matter of debate. Its examples of hieroglyphics did emulate the letters on obelisks and were accepted as genuine Egyptian throughout the 16th century (Dempsey p. 348). The was not very popular at first, owing to its obscure language, a mixture of Latin, Tuscan, and Venetian; the French translation many years later is what made it famous (Dempsey p. 348). But even in the early years it was probably used as a source-book by artists, both in its published version and earlier in manuscript. The action in the book finishes in 1467. Tamara Griggs (“Promoting the Past: the Hynerotomachia polifili as antiquarian enterprise,” Word and Image 14:1-2 (1998), pp. 17-39) argues that its genre is that of a learned travelogue, such as Cyriaco’s after 1435, or a commentary on archeological remains, such as Pogio’s in 1431-1438, or a sylloge of such reflections, such as the Quaedam antiqutatum fragmenta by Giovanni Marcanova of Padua, circulating in manuscript from 1465. These examples are all before 1467, which some people think is when the first version of the Hypnerotomachia manuscript was completed.
In 1499 Polydore’s On Discovery has a section on hieroglyphs (Curran p. 178). In 1504 Pietro Crinito published De honesta disciplina, with a short chapter on hieroglyphics (Curran p. 179).
Erasmus spoke of “hieroglyphics” in his Adages of 1508 (Curran 156).
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| Hieroglyphics is the name given to those enigmatic designs to much used in the early centuries, especially among the priest-prophets and theologians in Egypt, who thought it quite wrong to express the mysteries of wisdom in ordinary writing and thus expose them, as it were, to the uninitiated public. What they thought worth knowing they would record by drawing the shapes of various animals and inanimate things in such a way that it was not easy for the casual reader to unravel them forthwith. It was necessary first to learn the properties of individual things and the special force and nature of each separate creature; and the man who had really penetrated these could alone interpret the symbols and put them together, and thus solve the riddle of their meaning. For example, when the Egyptians wish to denote their god Osiris, whom they identify as the sun, they represent a scepter and draw on it the outline of an eye, to indicate of course that Osiris is a god, enjoys a king’s exalted power, and can see everything, because the ancients used to call the sun the eye of Jove. Something like this is recorded by Macrobius in the first book of the Saturnalia. |
This technique might work for some hieroglyphs. But no amount of understanding of the animals concerned could get one to some of the meanings given in Horapollo: for example, the vulture as signifying mothers because all vultures are female. At some point we have to go back to the beliefs of the people who used the hieroglyph in the first place. And even Alberti appealed to authority in interpreting the eye as God.
A way out might be the way of his adages, which were also hieroglyphs of a sort, like Pythagorean “symbola.” Erasmus interpreted them by citing the historical contexts in which they appeared. A similar technique could be applied to hieroglyphs. One might cite Macrobius, for example, as Erasmus in fact did. This is how one normally would investigate, for example, the ancient meaning of a word, by looking at the contexts in which it was used; and if it was in old dictionaries, so much the beter. Horapollo offered such a dictionary; and so did, on a more limited basis, other ancient texts on hieroglyphics.
In fact there are two views of language operating in these Renaissance discussions of how to interpret hieroglyphs. D. L. Drysdall, in “Fasanini’s Explanation of Sacred Writing,” (Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 13 (1983):1, p. 128f) says
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| Whilst generally accepting the Aristotelian notion of the conventional nature of all language, the humanists were keenly interested in the opposite notion, derived from Plato’s Cratylus, of a divine language, or signs which in some way contain their own meaning inherently and are universally valid. The classical Neoplatonists had quoted the Egyptian hieroglyphs as examples of such signs: Plotinus in the well-known verses commented by Ficino, Iamblichus in the passage quoted below (note 25). The idea of a natural language, in some way exempt from the arbitrary and the conventional into which language fell after the tower of Babel, looms large in linguistic thinking in the early Renaissance and explains the fascination with Egyptian symbols as possibly equal in some way to the Hebrew names imposed on creation by Adam, with other traditions which seem to transmit such symbols (mythology, fables, proverbs), and with langauge which seems to escape the conventional (enigmas, puns, ambiguities). |
Filippo Fasanini, about whom Drysdall is mainly concerned, was a professor of rhetoric and poetry at the Unviersity of Bologna starting in 1511. In 1517 Fasanini published the first complete Latin translation of Horapollo, with an appendix of his own reflections and material drawn from other ancient writers, perhaps drawn from the handout that Beroaldo, his predecessor at Bologna, had given his students. Here is a brief excerpt from this account of hieroglyphics:
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| Hieroglyphic characters, called “hieroglypha grammata” by the Greeks, were the sacred writing of the Egyptians, so called because they expressed the mysteries in religion. They were enigmatic and symbolic engravings, which were much used in ancient times and preceding centuries, especially among Egyptian prophets and teachers of religion, who considered it unlawful to expose the mysteries of wisdom in ordinary writing to lay people, as we do. But if anyone had learned and studied thoroughly from Aristotle and others the properties of each thing, the particular nature and essence of each animal, he would at length, by putting together his conjectures about these symbols, grasp the enigma of the meaning and, because of this knowledge, is honoured above the uninitiated crowd. (Drysdall, “Fasanini’s Explanation of sacred writing,” p. 135f. |
Of relevance to the possible cartomantic use of tarot cards is a quote of Fasanini’s from Suida about Chaeremon, whose book on hieroglyphics has been lost:
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| There were among the Egyptians also men called Hierogrammates, who indeed made prophecies about the future, and he recalls that one of them foretold marvelously to the king many great things about Moses who was yet to be born (Drysdall p. 137.) |
Fasanini goes on to quote not only from Ammianus, Herodotus, Plutarch, Diodorus, Macrobius, Apuleius, and Tacitus, in texts I quoted in part 1 of these posts. He also gives a passage from Lucan, familiar early on, as well as three he must have gotten from Ficino: St. Rufinus on the "cross" at Alexandria, Iamblichus, and Proclus.
I have already cited the St. Rufinus passage. The Lucan, from the Pharsalia;, is simply,
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| Before Egypt had learned to weave the river reeds, only birds and beasts and animals carved on stones preserved the utterances of the priests. (Drysdall p. 147). |
In 1518 Bernardo Trebatius published his translation of Horapollo, the one most widely distributed, Curran says. In 1522 appeared a summary translation by Beroaldo, published posthumously (Curran p. 181). “Early in the sixteenth century,” Celio Calcagnini also translated Horapollo, according to Dempsey (p. 344). This information perhaps comes from Giehlow, who is cited as saying Calcagnini translated Plutarch’s On Isis and Osiris at this time, 1509-1517 (http://www.jstor.org/pss/866823). Manning, The Emblem p. 64f, apparently agrees
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| Although not published until 1556, Valeriano’s Hieroglyphica, like Alciato’s manuscript emblems, belongs to the first decades of the century. At this time the enthusiasm for hieroglyphs was great. Celio Calcagnini was translating Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride, one of the most difficult Greek texts, and attracted the praise of Erasmus for doing so. |
An image of Isis was carried in the Carnival procession of 1520, modeled on a statue in Pope Leo X’s collection (Curran p. 190f, citing Pastor, History of the Popes 8:174f, descriptions by Sanuto and Michiel).
(To be concluded next post, where I will talk about how hieroglyphs spread from Italy to the rest of Western Europe, under the name of "emblems.")
HOW HIEROGLYPHS SPREAD FROM ITALY TO THE REST OF WESTERN EUROPE, UNDER THE NAME OF"'EMBLEMS"
In 1531 Alciato, a student of Fasanini, published his Liber Emblematicum. Originally from Milan, Alciato studied law at Pavia and Bologna, and then alternated between France and Ialy. His book propagated the word emblema throughout sixteenth-century Europe. His account of his subject has been quoted by Kwaw, but it is worth citing again: In 1532
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| Words indicate; things are indicated. But things can also indicate, for example, in the ‘Hieroglyphics of Horapollo’ (hieroglyphica apud Horum. Working from their arguments, we have also written a book in verse with the title Emblemata. |
Alciato's word was “emblema” or “emblemata,” a use of the words pioneered by the Hypnerotomachia, which had referred to the arrangements of hieroglyphs there as “emblematura,” meaning “mosaic work”—from “emblema,” originally, in Cicero and other authors, referring to tiles stuck on plates for decorative purposes (Manning p. 69). From him the word spread throughout Europe. Thus Moffit says (p. 7)
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| As was explained in French by Gilles Corrozet in 1540, an “embleme” is that which “on peut nommer lettre hiroglyphique” (one could call hieroglyphic writing). |
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| In the preparation of the Hieroglyphica Valeriano drew upon 225 authorities, ranging from Egyptian priests to Erasmus of Rotterdam, and including practically all known texts, sacred and secular, ancient and modern, that could be thought to contain “sacred wisdom.” (Diana Gallis, “Concealed Wisdom: Renaissance Hieroglyphic and Lorenzo Lotto’s Bergamo Intarsie,” (Art Bulletin 62:2 (1980), pp. 363-375) p. 364) |
Galis is one of the few scholars to cite Valeriano extensively, as it has yet to be translated into English or even published in a modern edition in any language.
Again let me refer to an author’s introduction. Gallis footnotes his Latin text (p. 365), which I reproduce as a scan, so that I can be sure of not introducing typing errors. Afterwards I will quote her summary. Here I include the Latin, even though I can’t read it, because her account of it in English seems quite short compared with the text.
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| Hieroglyphic, according to Piero Valeriano, whose Hieroglyphica of 1556 represents the sum of sixteenth-century knowledge on the subject, is a language of images invented by Egyptian priests and preserved by them for the purpose of revealing sacred wisdom, i.e., the lessons of philosophy, theology, history, and poetry, to the knowledgeable few, while concealing it from the ignorant multitude. The hieroglyphic method of revealing to some while concealing from others, says Valeriano, was adopted among the Greeks by Pythagoras and Plato, and among the Hebrews by Moses, David, the Prophets, indeed by all the writers of sacred Scripture. In the Christian era, he says, explicating Psalm 77:2, Christ himself used hieroglyphic when he spoke in parables, and the Apostles, following Christ’s example, similarly veiled their teachings. (Gallis p. 364f) |
He then goes on to define attributes, symbols, and allegory. "Attributes are distinctions, invented to render every figure the more easily known." And "Symbols are those attributes which have relation to mystery, to morality and to dogma..." Of course he says a lot more, in terms of examples.The knowledge of hieroglyphicks sprung from the sages of Egypt, who invented them to express the doctrines of their religion, as also their moral and political sciences. The hieroglyphicks were sometimes representations of human figures, but more frequently those of different animals, of fruit or flowers, according to the subject they meant to exhibit. They also made use of various geometrical figures, which were all well known by the wise men of that ingenious nation, whose employment it was to explain them: for this purpose they weer engraven upon their pyramids and obelisks which the people held in great veneration.
The invention of emblems took its rise from the study of hieroglyphicks; an emblem being propertly an hieroglyphick device, by which some moral instruction is understood; for example, the Pelican nourishing her young, is an emblematical device, moral and instructive, which denotes, the love of parents to their children, or that of a sovereign to his subjects. Peace setting fire to a trophy of arms, and shutting the gates of the temple of Janus, while Discord stands chained and frantick, are historical emblems, because they serve for monuments that are erected, or for medals which are struck, on account of some memorable action interesting to a whole nation.
An emblem frequently explains itself without the help of writing, but sometimes has need of a motto or inscription to explain it.
Allegory occurs first in poetry, and secondly in painting.
He then goes on for more than two pages elaborating on these points with examples.Allegory in Poetry is a figurative manner of describing by choice expressions, a sense different from what is wrote, the truth of which is hid and under a transparent veil.
Allegory is made use of in painting for the more clearly expressing a great subject when the most interesting and pathetick circumstances cannot be described in the gesture or countenance, or when they cannot be intoduced at one point of time: this enables an artist to illustrate an extensive grand subject with few figures, and sometimes with one only; the ancients observed this in the compositions of their medals; on one side was the name and portrait of the hero; on the reverse was one or two allegorical figures, sometimes only one simple emblem, explaining upon what account they were struck. By this means, the greatest events have been allegorically characterized and come to our knowledge, by the help of the judicious interpretation of the learned.
We have gone from the lofty heights of drawing the undrawable and saying the unsayable to the enigmatic communication of moral lessons, more puzzles to be solved than true enigmas. Of course this is just one person's view, Ripa's. But he was influential.
Concurrently with ordinary emblem books, books with enigmatic alchemical emblems were published. A famous example is Michael Meier’s Atalanta Fugiens, 1618. Even before the rise of the “emblem” format (picture, motto, explanation), alchemy books often had enigmatic illustrations, for example the Zurich copy of the Aurora Consurgens, early 15th century. There were alchemical books listed in the 1426 inventory of the Visconti library at Pavia (Joose-Gaugier, Pythagoras and Renaissance Europe, p. 245).
Roman letters were included with hieroglyphs in the Hypnerotomachia and in paintings of obelisks etc by Bellini, Mantegna, etc. Here is Dempsey:
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| The reason for this lies in the Renaissance notion that the Romans themselves used hieroglyphs on their temple friezes and on coins and medals, where they appear together with conventional inscriptions and familiar abbreviations. The dolphin and anchor, for example, derives from a coin of Titus, while the reverses of imperial coins are often inscribed with such forms as S.C. for Senatus consulto.p. 357) |
To these I think we could add the friezes on Roman-era Dionysian sarcophagi. To the uninitiated, these simply look like orgiastic “bacchanals”; but the people and objects were seen in terms of Orphic and Dionysian “mysteries” and so had ritual meaning, discernible to those who could interpret myths and veiled allusions in classical sources. In that sense, they conveyed profound truths about life, death, and salvation, truths knowable to the wise or initiated; they, too, are hieroglyphs. They were engraved in the 16th century and inspired further works of art (some of it classed as pornography).
But I think that in the emblem books, starting with Alciato, there is a certain debasement from the lofty mysticism of the 15th and early 16th century. Even Valeriano does not really deliver on his claims of reaching divine heights, according to Manning (p. 61). Instead of truth inexpressible in words, we have seemingly enigmatic pictures which on closer inspection turn out to be common exhortations to virtue. In contrast, Alberti would partially explain an image, leaving out important elements, and end by telling the reader he's only said some of what's there. (I like to think the same about tarot cards.) I should probably expand on or qualify this point, but I will stop here.
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