The early tarot Temperance card almost invariably shows a lady pouring liquid from one jug to another. However among the cards there is one notable exception, of some significance because it is also one of the earliest examples of the card. It is one of the so-called "Catania" cards, so called because it is held by the Museo Civico di Castello Ursino of Catania; it is also known as the "Alessandro Sforza", from the theory that it is part of a deck made for that person, based on a device of three interlocking rings found in another.card of that deck.
The card was identified as Temperance by Ronald Decker (Dummett, The Game of Tarot, p. 69L). The identification assumed that the raised hand originally contained a jug that pours liquid onto something held by the lower hand. However the jugs are not now visible. And why the person is sitting on a deer, technically a stag, is unclear.
Closer inspection reveals lines that might be the outline of what is more likely something cylindrical, around which the figure's lower hand is wrapped, remaining narrow too far up to be the stem of most cups. While that interpretation is not totally excluded, there is also the unusual placement of the lower hand, right at the figure's sexual organ, and a horizontal line at the level of the lower boundary of the ribs. Phaeded on THF
suggested a phallus
in the person's lower hand.
Erotic decks were not unusual at that time (as "Huck" points out in a
later post on that thread). "Phaeded" surmises that the upper hand is
pouring cold water on the ardor contained in the lower hand.It might be objected that the person is female, as indicated by the breasts. In that case, the lines visible on the card might be to suggest water, as Andrea Vitali has suggested, and that she is directing that water to her organ of sexuality. There is also the consideration that in medieval iconogaphy, except sometimes for Fortitude, the cardinal virtues were represented by ladies.
Although the lid is commonly known as "Reclining Youth, for an authoritative identification of the figure as male, here is a smaller photo plus the caption, from a rather definitive book on that artist (Lo Scheggia, 1999, by Luciano Bellosi, p. 74): 
There would have been a companion cassone for the lady, as seen with a similar cassone by the same artist in the Statens Museum for Art in Copenhagen, which also has the companion piece (for a fuller discussion, see my post at http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?p=14016#p14016, of August 23, 2013). Lo Scheggia is a known producer of playing cards (http://trionfi.com/naibi-on-sale) and could well have painted the Catania tarot card.
There would have been a companion cassone for the lady, as seen with a similar cassone by the same artist in the Statens Museum for Art in Copenhagen, which also has the companion piece (for a fuller discussion, see my post at http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?p=14016#p14016, of August 23, 2013). Lo Scheggia is a known producer of playing cards (http://trionfi.com/naibi-on-sale) and could well have painted the Catania tarot card.So far, then, Phaeded's interpretation is at least defensible. That is what Temperance is: the control of one's passions. if quite a bit risque for that time and place in a luxury deck, i.e. one that could expected to be passed down through the generations. But what is the deer doing there?
Phaeded suggested that the deer is the animal associated with Saturn/Time, and that he had been the original person with raised hand, pouring sand from one compartment to another of an hourglass, later changed to the two jugs. Time did not get an hourglass until around 1450, on this account, and before that the hourglass was held by Temperance, even if two jugs with fluids in them had been associated with Temperance for centuries.
Looking in Katzenellenbogen, Allegories of the virtues and vices in mediaeval art, I see that most of the depictions of Temperance showed her with two vessels, sometimes mixing them. Mixing water with wine is mentioned specifically on p. 45, in relation to the depictions of the virtues on "the Eilbertus Altar from the Guelph Treasure, circa 1150-1160"; also p. 49, from the Meuse School, circa 1160-1170. On that one, there is the inscription, "Omne tulit punctum, qui miscuit utile dulei", from Horace, he says. There is nothing about Temperance with an hourglass. That must have come later, perhaps localized in Italy. The book mainly draws on Northern European images, from the 9th through 13th centuries. Talking about the 9th century ms. with the four cardinal virtues (at right below), he says (p. 55):
The Latin translates as " it [Temperance] extinguishes the fire of lust" ("Quoted in Guide to the Spiritual Life, by John Baptist Scaramelli, S. J., Toronto 1902, at https://archive.org/stream/directoriumascet03scaruoft_djvu.txt). To this another quotation could be added, it seems to me, even if in the literal sense it is not true: "Non potest igne ignis extingui.... Verum quod igni est aqua..." ("Fire cannot be extinguished by another fire ... But flames by water", John Chrysostom In Genesis 58). (The first part is not true because the most effective way to extinguish a wildfire is with controlled fire down-wind; then the wildfire will go out from lack of fuel. Let us not moralize from that example, but rather focus on the commonplace that water quenches the fire of lust.)Temperance holds a torch and pours out a jug full of water, for, as Julianus Pomerius says: "Ignem libidinosse voluptatis extinguit". Footnote: De vita contemplativa lib. III, cap. 19 (Migne P[atrologia] L[atina] 59, 502)
Katzenellenbogen adds that
Temperantia's attributes were exchanged, in the course of the 11th century, for a cup and bottle. Mixing water with wine, the virtue reduces the over-potent drink to one of moderate strength (Figs. 33, 34).
Unfortunately Katzenellenbogen does not give other illustrations of the cardinal virtues. On the cards, of course, we usually have two similar vessels, not dissimilar as in his examples (an exception is the Catelin-Geoffroy).
Katzenellenbogen continues (p. 56)
He then cites examples from the 12th century. However even in the latter part of the 13th century Temperance was shown with torch and vessel. His example is Arundel ms. 83 II, British Museum, in Trees of the Virtues and Vices. He says (p. 72) "cf. Saunders [O. Elfrida Saunders, English Illumination I, Florence-Paris 1928], pl. 105 and p. 103". I looked up this reference. All it had was the Tree of the Vices; but it said that this ms. was also called the De Lisle Psalter. I found a book on this manuscript, The Psalter of Robert de Lisle in the British Library, by Lucy Freeman Sandler; the relevant image is. below, with Temperance on the lower right.Temperantia bears a spray of blossom as well as her usual vessels.
The whole illumination is at http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-c5EjM4lUmaA/U ... irtues.JPG.
Of the attributes, Sandler says:
I would say a torch, following Katzenellenbogen's designation. And for Prudence, a winged serpent. A similar image occurs at the bottom right of another illumination in the same book (by a different artist, not quite as good), this one of a "tower of wisdom," another diagram of virtues: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-URo3y37vpH0/U ... 3Tower.JPG. Same attributes, except that the lion on the shield is exchanged for a red cross on white ground. Both illuminations are part of a "speculum theologiae" series of 13 or 14 such diagrams that were extremely popular. Most do not illustrate the virtues with persons, just columns with words on them. I will have a post with more details about them on the "theological virtues" thread.Prudence holds a dove and a serpent at arms' length; Justice holds a palm branch (whip?) and scale; Fortitude, a sword and shield with a heraldic lion; Temperance, a chalice-like bowl (of water?) and a cornucopia of fire.
This Psalter is English, with a note written in it saying,
However it was done "in the years soon after 1308", Sandler says, based on the theological diagrams in it (including the Tree of Virtue) worked out in France that did not start appearing in manuscripts until the "first years of the fourteenth century" (p. 17).I Robert de Lyle give this book on this day [November 25] in the year of our Lord 1339 to my daughter Audere with my blessing. ... Written in my hand.
An example of a tarot Temperance card that rather clearly shows the lady extinguishing fire (albeit not a torch) is the Anonymous of 17th century Paris, at right. It would most naturally be seen as the fire of lust or anger.
In that case it may well not make any difference whether the lady on the card is male or female (ignoring the problem of the horizontal line): the water douses the fire in either case.
Then there is the question of the deer. Deer as such are not listed in Katzenellenbogen. But he does have something on a stag:
It is in an illumination of Christ surrounded by five virtues, in a manuscript of Hildegard of Bingen's Liber Scivias, c. 1175. It illustrates her first vision. But did Hildegard have conventional visions or idiosyncratic ones?Constantia with two windows in her breast (mirror of faith) and a leaping stag (heavenly longing) above them
However in the illustration it appears that the stag is consuming a serpent rather than water. Haney says (p. 493):As the hart panteth after the fountains of water, so my soul panteth after thee, O God.
The online commentary points out what might be the best explanation:The visual theme here is the longing of the petitioner for God, expressed in v. 2. Here are two further themes not clearly addressed in the psalm itself. Goldschmidt (292) points out that there is a reference to the Physiologus, which describes the stag killing the serpent in order not to die but to obtain fresh water. The other is Christ's direct involvement with the psalmist. While the psalmist cries out to Christ in psalm 41, it would appear that the trust in God expressed in v. 2 is symbolized by the stag overcoming the serpent which symbolizes the soteriological power of Christ.
The stag devours a serpent and no fountains are illustrated. This is because the illustration is allegorical. St. Augustine wrote that when the stag ate the serpent (evil) it developed a great thirst and came to drink the pure waters of baptism. (PL, St. Augustine, xxxvi, 465).
The medieval bestiaries picked up the same theme, for example that of Bibliotheque Nationale ms. 1951, 31v, at right (http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beastgallery162.htm#).
Andrea Vitali in his online essay on the card (English translation at http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=126&lng=ENG; cites a bestiary in Tuscany. (Vitali, I must emphasize, does not apply the detail of the snake to the card; for him it shows only how the deer exemplified mildness):
In the Tuscany Bestiary Libro sulla natura degli animali (Book of the nature of the animals) a medieval moral essay, the Christian is repeatedly invited, through opportune animal examples, to exercise the virtues demanded by his profession of faith and to the constant practice of confession and penance. This work tells of how the deer was able to kill the snakes, in order then to eat them and to get rid of the ingested poison, drinking pure water. From this behaviour there is a precept of moral training “Also men must imitate it, getting rid of hatred, of lust, of rage, of avarice, resorting to the living source that is Christ” (Chapter XLVI).
And while some medieval works emphasized the deer at the spring, others, such as the Rutland psalter of c. 1260 (British Library, at right) had one of te deer with the snake. That seems to be an interpretation introduced by Augustine, as the online commentary states..First there is the snake, which is eaten, and then comes the neutralization of the poison, i.e. the remaining passion, by drinking from the springSo Augustine's addition of the serpent to the psalmist's image of the spring fits in well with the Temperance card, as the suppression of the passions. In that case the serpent, and also the torch of the medieval images of Temperance, may well suggest the phallus, and so the particular passion of lust. But that does not mean that the person on the card is male and has a phallus in his hand, except perhaps as a kind of double entendre, of a sort which indeed the Renaissance was quite fond.There was already the torch and vessel, a standard medieval image of Temperance, plus the deer as a symbol of mildness and longing for God. At the same time the double entendre could apply just as well if it is a woman on the card, dousing her own sexual organ. The horizontal line might then be an accidental mark on the card, or added later.
Another way of interpreting the card, as Vitali and several others have done, is in relation to the goddess Diana, one of the virginal goddesses of the Greco-Roman pantheon, particularly associated with deer, usually as the object of her hunt. Occasionally they were shown with her not as an object to be killed but as an animal tamed by her, as in Lucas Cranach the Elder's various "Apollo and Diana" paintings, of which one, in the Royal Collections Trust, is at left (connection made by Marco Ponzi at http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?p=14176#p14176).In that case the card could suggest Diana lying back on the deer, the animal being a visual reminder of the effect of the water poured on her sex. Vitali develops this interpretation in relation to the renewal of her virginity at the time of the Anados, her annual appearance at the spring where Acteon saw her, in his myth. I do not know, however, whether this myth was known this early in the Renaissance, as the style seems to be on of those practiced during the lifetime of Alessandro Sforza (1409-1473). Moreover, the deer of the Anados, as the metamorphosis of the hunter Actaeon, is not tamed, as on the card, but killed, by his own dogs. However it is not inappropriate as an additional allusion, the tamed deer of Diana, sitting on it in the manner of Phyllis and Aristotle.
We now have a fairly complete interpretation of the Catania Temperance card: the dampening of the sexual appetite, carried, supplanted, and supported by a longing for God. In Platonic terms (the Symposium), it is the transmutation of vulgar love into celestial love, Aphrodite Pandemos into Aphrodite Uranos, Common Venus into Celestial Venus.
This interpretation, it seems to me, is especially suitable for a Temperance card that either immediately precedes or follows the Death card, as it seems to relate particularly to old age and other times in life where death is is especially threatening, and so the soul just before or after death; in the latter case, not only are the bodily appetites extinguished, but the body itself.
