Cardinal virtue of Wisdom/Prudence

[firecatpickles]

The cardinal virtues are so-called because they came first, from pre-Christian times. So we have the "cardinal" virtues of Justice, Strength, Temperance and Prudence. Of these, the first three are also referred to as the "Active Virtues" since it requires action of the body and not mind to accomplish. The last one, Prudence is an "Intellectual Virtue" and is part of the religious canon of the Eccesiastical Virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity (i.e., "Love" as per "the of highest of virtues" ala the Gospel). There is an overlap here and some confusion.

If we go further back, to Aristotle, we see a great many more virtues. I think that the Italian Minchiate is based on these Aristotlean virtues (can you see Aristotle's little head peeking out of that Magician card, anyone?)...

1. Friendship (V. Love)
2. Temperance (VI)
3. Strength (VII)
4. Justice (VIII)
5. Felicity (VIIII. The Wheel)
6. Magnaminity (X. The Chariot)
7. Generosity (XI. Time)
8. Intelligence (Star)
9. Sapience (Moon)
10. Wisdom (Sun)
11. Science (World)
12. Art (Fame)

See Verbal and Visual Representation in Fourteenth-Century France
Claire Richter Sherman
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford
© 1995 The Regents of the University of California

 

[Herzog]

Care, reason and sound judgment. I suppose common sense works in, as well. So yes, she urges a more intellectual approach. In this sense Prudence can be linked with the Queen of Coins.

Tarot of Prague includes a special, Prudence card.

 

[Αρσιησισ]

In the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn Key IX was called Prudence.

729

 

[Laura Borealis]

I'm reviving this discussion in light of the question coming up in this thread.

terroin observed:

The trusty Wikipedia http://tinyurl.com/d45mdl refers to Plato's distinction in terms of the classes of his Republic. Prudence governed the mind (rulers); Fortitude the "spirited element" (warrior class) and temperance the base instincts (common people); while Justice ruled all.

The illustrations in that article, from Pope Clement II's tomb, are interesting: Justice, Temperance and Fortitude are much like the classical Trumps (Marseilles, etc - except Fortitude is approaching the lion face on). Prudence is strangling a dragon. In other tomb portrayals & allegorical paintings she is looking in a mirror.

None of these looks anything like The Hermit, which is the only Trump I have heard suggested as a fill-in for the missing Cardinal Virtue.

Why is Prudence missing from the Tarot?

I mentioned that I'd heard of Prudence being connected with the Hermit (one piece of evidence being the Mantegna depiction of Prudence), but I'd also heard of Prudence being connected with the Papessa and the World. moderndayruth contributed this example of Prudence from the Mantegna prints, in which the virtue is depicted with two faces: a young woman's and an old man's, looking into the past and the future.

Since then I've found my copy of John Shepard's The Tarot Trumps, in which he talks about some of these theories. In the chapter on the Charles VI pack, he says:

"Given the highly systematic nature of the programmes used by artists in the fifteenth century, it seems most unlikely that only three of the traditional four Cardinal Virtues should have been represented in the tarot. To find the missing fourth Cardinal Virtue, Prudence, we have to look for another lady dressed in the same way. A fourth lady wearing a polygonal halo is to be found later in this pack, where she is standing on top the The World. In the mind of the designer of the Charles VI cards she was fairly clearly meant to have been taken as Prudence, often regarded as the highest of the Cardinal Virtues. It must be emphasized that this identification is not necessarily to be applied to other kinds of pack."

Attached are the Charles VI World, and for comparison, another cardinal virtue from the same pack, to show the halo he is talking about. Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude (Strength) all have the same polygonal halo.

I have to go run errands (it's gotten later than I thought) but when I come back I have more to add from Shepard's observations.

 

[Huck]

The 5x14-theory assumes, that the "6 added trumps" in the Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo Tarocchi (others believe, that these were "replacements for lost cards") included ...

Sun - Moon - Star

Temperance - Strength - Prudentia (usually called "World")

... see

http://trionfi.com/0/f/11/
and
http://trionfi.com/0/f/

In various discussions here at Aeclectic it was assumed, that the figure shown in the Charles VI had a close relationship to "Fame" (Fama), as used by Petrarca in the Trionfi poem.
Fame figures on contemporary Cassone in Florence showed a strong similarity to the World/Prudentia in Charles VI.

Actually it seems to have been a composition of three ideas: Prudentia, Fame and World.

Prudentia generally had many variations, more than the other cardinal virtues.

 

[Laura Borealis]

Back from errands!

Thanks Huck! I'm not familiar with the 5x14 theory; I'll have to read up on it. Thanks for the Visconti World and that Prudence (I assume that's a mirror she's holding).

Continuing my thoughts from before I had to run my errands, looking at the Charles VI cards, I tend to agree that the World card is meant to be Prudence -- in that particular deck. The other three virtues have the special haloes; the World has one too; other figures in the deck do not. But maybe all this tells us is that the artist of the Charles VI cards noted the lack of a clear Prudence card, and decided to incorporate that virtue into the World. Sheer speculation on my part of course.

(By the way, the name Charles VI for this deck is inaccurate; I used it here because that's what the author of the book I was quoting called them. It seems that the current understanding is that this deck is from northern Italy, late 15th century. But we generally know what is meant by the Charles VI deck despite the misnomer.)


As Huck pointed out, Prudence was depicted in a number of different ways. She was also included in more than one list of virtues. She is one of the four Cardinal virtues, but also one of Aristotle's intellectual virtues as mentioned by Fire Cat above. This Aristotlean virtue in Greek is "Phronesis" -- usually translated as practical wisdom, but also as prudence.

I don't know enough about iconography to do more than speculate, but I wonder if some of the variety of depictions of Prudence has to do with different ways that she was understood -- as a Cardinal vs. an intellectual virtue for example.

Here are two examples of Prudence from the Iconologia (I'm guessing from two different editions, since the art is different). The text for the second one reads:

"Fig. 251. Prudenza: PRUDENCE
A woman with two Faces, a gilded Helmet on her Head; a Stag by her; a Looking-glass in her left Hand, in her right an Arrow, and a Remora fish twisting about it.
The Helmet signifies the Wisdom of a prudent man, to be arm'd with wise Counsel to defend himself: the Stag chewing, that we should ruminate before resolving on a Thing. The Mirror bids us examine our Defects by knowing ourselves. The Remora, that stops a Ship, not to delay doing Good, when Time serves."

A remora? That's a suckerfish. Often found attached to sharks. Seems like an odd item to have winding about Prudence's arrow... but Wikipedia to the rescue. "In ancient times, the remora was believed to stop a ship from sailing. In Latin remora means 'delay,' while the genus name Echeneis comes from Greek echein ('to hold') and naus ('a ship')."

In the first example I attached, it looks a lot more like an asklepian, a single snake wrapped around a staff (as opposed to double snakes which would be a caduceus) except the staff has an arrow-head or a spear-head. And in the four different versions of the Minchiate Prudence I've found, it's just a snake, sans staff of any kind.

But that's not the detail that jumped out at me with these Iconologia images. Rather, I noticed the stag which is in both, as well as that old man's face looking backward (hard to see in one of them, but it's there). Back to John Shepard's book The Tarot Trumps:

"The association of hermits with Prudence was traditional; and Prudence too had something of the same double nature, reflected in the way she is portrayed in the Mantegna series with two faces, one that of a Old Man looking backward as though to his worldly past (Memoria) the other that of a young woman like the Virtues, looking forward to the future life of the soul, and Eternity (Provedentia)... In early versions of the card The Hermit was shown holding an hourglass... In later designs the hourglass was usually changed to a lantern. I think this change arose from The Hermit having taken over the role of Prudence. In one well-known medieval text Prudence had been called the lantern."

Unfortunately he doesn't footnote the medieval text he speaks of, or the traditional association of hermits with Prudence, though in the bibliography for this chapter he gives Frances Yates' Art of Memory as having good information on the virtues, especially Prudence. I can't find my copy of Yates at the moment to check this.

 

[Laura Borealis]

So we have the double-faced Prudence as a potential link to the Hermit. What excited me more about the two examples from the Iconologia was the presence of the stag, lying down beside her. And that's because in the Minchiate, the figure of Time (which is, as I understand, equated with the Hermit) has the same stag. Attached below are the three versions of the Minchiate Time that I've found.

And -- though it might be a stretch -- there's also an arrow there, the arrow that bisects the hourglass of Time. Could that be the same arrow Prudence holds in the Iconologia images? Though without the snake of course. Check it out. Am I crazy? Probably... as they say, Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.

Whether the Hermit was really meant to be understood as Prudence though -- I think this is still very much a what-if. I tend to wonder if maybe Prudence isn't in the tarot at all (at least, not in the Marseille-based sequence that we've come to know as the official one). Yes, it does seem odd to leave out one of the four Cardinal virtues. And it does seem clear that the artist of the Charles VI cards put her in the sequence, on the World.

But it doesn't necessarily follow that she would be hidden or encoded into another card in other decks. What would be the reason for doing that? The other virtues aren't hidden. They're out in plain sight. It might be more logical to assume she simply wasn't represented because whatever the original "story" of the trumps was (if there was indeed such a story) Prudence wasn't needed. Don't throw rocks at me, I'm just thinking out loud here.

 

[Laura Borealis]

Just for kicks, here are the four examples of the Minchiate Prudence I've found. It's interesting how stable the depiction is over four different artists probably working at different time periods. But of course the Minchiate was always a local variation.

Oh yeah -- check out her polygonal halo, on three of the examples. Shades of Charles VI!

ETA: The Minchiate deck puts Prudence with Faith, Hope, and Charity, rather than with the other Cardinal virtues, which are grouped together earlier in the sequence along with Love. Prudence, Faith, Hope and Charity all have those polygonal or scalloped halos (except in the Etruria version) while Temperance, Justice, and Strength do not. Clearly the artists wanted to link P., F., H. and C. graphically with each other, same as the Charles VI artist linked the World graphically with the Cardinal virtues -- but why, I do not know.

 

[Huck]

The connection "Father Time" with "stag" appears already in the typical Trionfi pictures of the Petrarca poem, so likely rather early around or short after 1440. In the poem the cardinal virtues were presented together with Chastity (second figure, and Father Time was 4th figure), as far I know.

Ripa's figures are later productions (first half 16th century). In this time humanism developed and had fun to develop new allegorical ideas, so there's no guarantee, that these associations are old and relevant for the early Trionfi card forms. This was in the historical development unexpected and increasing new creativity in regard of an expanding book market, which offered opportunity to earn some money with such ideas ... . Earlier times should have been less creative.

If there was a "Father Time" in the Mantegna Tarocchi, then it was in the motif 47, Saturnus, combining Kronos-Chronos-Ouroboros with the planet Saturn feature, that it is the slowest planet in astrology.

As far I'm orientated, Prudentia knew presentations with two or even three heads, but I have a lack of any idea, when this started. Is there an example before the Mantegna Tarocchi?

Janus had two (or occasionally 4) heads ...

Janus was "time-related", true.

... ... naturally, it's easier for two heads to be prudent than for one alone.

 

[Laura Borealis]

Petrarch's Trionfi! I should have thought to look there. And there are the stags, and Time's crutches as on the Minchiate cards. Thank you, Huck.

I knew that Ripa was later than the emergence of the tarot, but I'd read that he (and other collectors of iconography) went back to Classical sources. But I hear you on the artists having fun with allegorical ideas. Surely that remora is a later addition, or a creative interpretation of a plain old snake.

Speaking of later depictions, I found this Allegory of Prudence (Simon Voulet, 1590-1649) I'm going to try to embed the image (this never works for me, that's why I do attachments...)

Hey it worked. Anyway. Who's down there at Pru's feet? Time himself, with his beard, sickle and hourglass.

Three-headed Prudence... I did run across a reference to that but I don't remember where. There's Titian's Allegory of Prudence which contains a self-portrait. I don't know if that's useful to us. But wandering the web from Titian I ran across this essay which discusses Chaucer.

Chaucer describes a Prudence with three eyes in his Troilus and Crisedye, enabling her to see the past, the present, and the future:

"Prudence, allas, oon of thyne eyen thre
Me lakked alwey, er that I come here!
On tyme ypassed wel remembred me,
And present tyme ek koud ich wel ise,
But future tyme, er I was in the snare,
Koud I nat sen; that causeth now my care."

"Alas, Prudence! I always lacked one of your three eyes before I came here; time past I well remembered, and could well see time present, but I could not foresee the future, until I was in the snare, and that brings now my bitterness." (source for translation)

That essay goes on to mention a three-eyed Prudence in Dante as well (I haven't read the whole thing). Both Dante and Chaucer would predate the Mantegna. And clearly the idea of dual faces or extra eyes to see backward and forward in time is older, given your example of Janus.

This is all fascinating.