JEROME CARDAN 
 
 A BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY 
 
 BY 
 
 W. G. WATERS 
 
 "To be content that times to come should only know there was 
 such a man, not caring whether they knew more of him, was a frigid 
 ambition in Cardan." SIR THOMAS BROWNE. 
 
 LAWRENCE & BULLEN, Limited, 
 1 6 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, 
 London, MDCCCXCVIII. 
 
RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, 
 LONDON & BUNGAY. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 No attempt is made in the following pages to submit 
 to historical treatment the vast and varied mass of printed 
 matter which Cardan left as his contribution to letters 
 and science, except in the case of those works which 
 are, in purpose or incidentally, autobiographical, or of 
 those which furnish in themselves effective contributions 
 towards the framing of an estimate of the genius and 
 character of the writer. Neither has it seemed worth 
 while to offer to the public another biography constructed 
 on the lines of the one brought out by Professor Henry 
 Morley in 1854, for the reason that the circumstances 
 of Cardan's life, the character of his work, and of the 
 times in which he lived, all appeared to be susceptible of 
 more succinct and homogeneous treatment than is possible 
 in a chronicle of the passing years, and of the work 
 that each one saw accomplished. At certain junctures 
 the narrative form is inevitable, but an attempt has 
 been made to treat the more noteworthy episodes of 
 Cardan's life and work, and the contemporary aspect of 
 the republic of letters, in relation to existing tendencies 
 and conditions, whenever such a course has seemed 
 possible. 
 
 Professor Morley's book, The Life of Girolamo 
 Cardano y of Milan, physician, has been for some time 
 out of print. This industrious writer gathered together 
 a large quantity of material, dealing almost as fully with 
 
 2 .12 41) 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 the more famous of the contemporary men of mark, 
 with whom Cardan was brought into contact, as with 
 Cardan himself. The translations and analyses of some 
 of Cardan's more popular works which Professor Morley 
 gives are admirable in their way, but the space they 
 occupy in the biography is somewhat excessive. Had 
 sufficient leisure for revision and condensation been 
 allowed, Professor Morley's book would have taken a 
 high place in biographical literature. As it stands it is 
 a noteworthy performance ; and, by reason of its wide 
 and varied stores of information and its excellent index, 
 it must always prove a valuable magazine of memoires 
 pour servir for any future students who may be moved 
 to write afresh concerning the life and work of the great 
 Milanese physician. 
 
 An apology may be needed for the occurrence here 
 and there of passages translated from the De Vita 
 Propria and the De Utilitate ex Adversis capienda, 
 passages which some readers may find too frequent and 
 too lengthy, but contemporary opinion is strongly in 
 favour of letting the subject speak for himself as far as 
 may be possible. The date and place of Cardan's 
 quoted works are given in the first citation therefrom ; 
 those of his writings which have not been available in 
 separate form have been consulted in the collected 
 edition of his works in ten volumes, edited by Spon, and 
 published at Lyons in 1663. 
 
 The author desires to acknowledge with gratitude the 
 valuable assistance in the way of suggestion and emenda- 
 tion which he received from Mr. R. C. Christie during 
 the final revision of the proofs. 
 
 London, October 1898. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 LIKE certain others of the illustrious personages who 
 flourished in his time, Girolamo Cardano, or, as he has 
 become to us by the unwritten law of nomenclature, 
 Jerome Cardan, was fated to suffer the burden and 
 obloquy of bastardy. 1 He was born at Pavia from the 
 illicit union of Fazio Cardano, a Milanese jurisconsult 
 and mathematician of considerable repute, and a young 
 widow, whose maiden name had been Chiara Micheria, 
 his father being fifty-six, and his mother thirty-seven 
 years of age at his birth. The family of Fazio was settled 
 at Gallarate, a town in Milanese territory, and was one 
 which, according to Jerome's contention, could lay claim 
 to considerable antiquity and distinction. He prefers a 
 claim of descent from the house of Castillione, founding 
 the same upon an inscription on the apse of the principal 
 
 1 Bayle is unwilling to admit Cardan's illegitimate birth. In 
 De Consolatione, Opera, torn. i. p. 619 (Lyons, 1663), Cardan writes 
 in reference to the action of the Milanese College of Physicians: 
 " Medicorum collegium, suspitione oborta, quod (tarn male a patre 
 tractatus) spurius essem, repellebat." Bayle apparently had not 
 read the De Consolatione, as he quotes the sentence as the work of 
 a modern writer, and affirms that the word " suspitio '' would not 
 have been used had the fact been notorious. But in the Dialogus 
 de Morte, Opera, torn. i. p. 676, Cardan declares that his father 
 openly spoke of him as a bastard. 
 
 B 
 
2 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 church at Gallarate. 1 He asserts that as far back as 
 1189 Milo Cardano was Governor of Milan for more 
 than seven years, and according to tradition Franco 
 Cardano, the commander of the forces of Matteo 
 Visconti, 2 was a member of the family. If the claim of 
 the Castillione ancestry be allowed the archives of the 
 race would be still farther enriched by the name of Pope 
 Celestine IV., Godfrey of Milan, who was elected Pope 
 in 1241, and died the same year. 
 
 Cardan's immediate ancestors were long-lived. The 
 sons of Fazio Cardano, his great-grandfather, Joanni, 
 Aldo, and Antonio, lived to be severally ninety-four, 
 eighty-eight, and eighty-six years of age. Of these 
 Joanni begat two sons : Antonio, who lived eighty-eight 
 years, and Angelo, who reached the age of eighty-six. 
 To Aldo were born Jacopo, who died at seventy-two; 
 Gottardo, who died at eighty-four; and Fazio, the father 
 of Jerome, who died at eighty. 3 
 
 Fazio, albeit he came of such a long-lived stock, and 
 lived himself to be fourscore, suffered much physical 
 trouble during his life. On account of a wound which 
 he had received when he was a youth, some of the 
 bones of his skull had to be removed, and from this 
 time forth he never dared to remain long with his head 
 uncovered. When he was fifty-nine he swallowed a 
 certain corrosive poison, which did not kill him, but 
 left him toothless. He was likewise round-shouldered, 
 a stammerer, and subject to constant palpitation of the 
 
 1 De Utilitate ex adversis Capienda (Franeker, 1648), p. 357. 
 
 2 Matteo Visconti was born in 1250, and died in 1322. He was 
 lord of Novara Vercello Como and Monferrato, and was made 
 Vicar Imperial by Adolphus of Nassau. Though he was worsted 
 in his conflict with John XXII. he did much to lay the foundations 
 of his family. 
 
 3 De Vita Propria (Amsterdam, 1654), ch. i. p. 4. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 3 
 
 heart ; but in compensation for these defects he had 
 eyes which could see in the dark and which needed not 
 spectacles even in advanced age. 
 
 Of Jerome's mother little is known, Her family 
 seems to have been as tenacious of life as that of Fazio, 
 for her father Jacopo lived to be seventy-five years of 
 age. Of his maternal grandfather Jerome remarks that 
 he was a highly skilled mathematician, and that when 
 he was about seventy years of age, he was cast into 
 prison for some offence against the law. He speaks of 
 his mother as choleric in temper, well dowered with 
 memory and mental parts, small in stature and fat, and 
 of a pious disposition, 1 and declares that she and his 
 father were alike in one respect, to wit that they were 
 easily moved to anger and were wont to manifest but 
 lukewarm and intermittent affection for their child. 
 Nevertheless they were in a way indulgent to him. His 
 father permitted him to remain in bed till the second 
 hour of the day had struck, or rather forbade him to 
 rise before this time an indulgence which worked well 
 for the preservation of his health. He adds that in 
 after times he always thought of his father as possessing 
 the kindlier nature of the two. 2 
 
 It would seem from the passage above written, as well 
 as from certain others subsequent, that Jerome had little 
 affection for his mother; and albeit he neither chides 
 nor reproaches her, he never refers to her in terms 
 so appreciative and loving as those which he uses in 
 lamenting the death of his harsh and tyrannical father. 
 
 1 Cardan makes a statement in De Consolatione, Opera, torn. i. 
 p. 605, which indicates that her disposition was not a happy one. 
 "Matrem meam Claram Micheriam, juvenem vidi, cum admodum 
 puer essem, meminique hanc dicere solitam, Utinam si Deo 
 placuisset, extincta forem in infantia." 
 
 2 De Vita Propria, ch. i. p. 4. 
 
4 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 In the Geniturarum Exempla^ he says that, seeing he is 
 writing of a woman, he will confine his remarks to 
 saying that she was ingenious, of good parts, generous, 
 upright, and loving towards her children. Perhaps the 
 fact that his father died early, while his mother lived on 
 for many years, and was afterwards a member of his 
 household together with his wife may account for the 
 colder tone of his remarks while writing about her. 
 She was the widow of a certain Antonio Alberio, 2 and 
 during her marriage had borne him three children, 
 Tommaso, Catilina, and Joanni Ambrogio ; but when 
 Jerome was a year old all three of these died of the 
 plague within the space of a few weeks. 3 He himself 
 narrowly escaped death from the same cause, and this 
 attack he attributes to an inherited tendency from his 
 mother, she having suffered from the same disease 
 during her girlhood. There seems to have been born to 
 Fazio and Chiara another son, who died at birth. 4 
 
 Jerome Cardan was born on September 24, 1501, 
 between half-past six o'clock and a quarter to seven in 
 the evening. In the second chapter of his autobiography 
 he gives the year as 1500, and in De Utilitate^ p. 347, he 
 writes the date as September 23, but on all other occasions 
 the date first written is used. Before he saw the light 
 malefic influences were at work against him. His mother, 
 urged on no doubt by the desire to conceal her shame, and 
 
 1 Geniturarum Exempla (Basil, 1554), p. 436. 
 
 2 De Rerum Varietate (Basil, 1557), p. 655. 
 
 3 De Utilitate^ p. 347. There is a passage in Geniturarum 
 Exempla^ p. 435, dealing with Fazio's horoscope, which may be 
 taken to mean that these children were his. "Alios habuisse 
 filios qui obierint ipsa genitura demostrat, me solo diu post etia 
 illius morte superstite." 
 
 4 With regard to the union of his parents he writes: "Uxorem 
 vix duxit ob Lunam afflictam et earn in senectute." Geniturarum 
 Exempla^ p. 435. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 5 
 
 persuaded by evil counsellors, drank a potion of abortive 
 drugs in order to produce miscarriage, 1 but Nature on 
 this occasion was not to be baulked. In recording the 
 circumstances of his birth he writes at some length in 
 the jargon of astrology to show how the celestial bodies 
 were leagued together so as to mar him both in body 
 and mind. "Wherefore I ought, according to every 
 rule, to have been born a monster, and, under the circum- 
 stances, it was no marvel that it was found necessary to 
 tear me from the womb in order to bring me into the 
 world. Thus was I born, or rather dragged from my 
 mother's body. I was to all outward seeming dead, with 
 my head covered with black curly hair. I was brought 
 round by being plunged in a bath of heated wine, a 
 remedy which might well have proved hurtful to any 
 other infant. My mother lay three whole days in labour, 
 but at last gave birth to me, a living child." 2 
 
 The sinister influences of the stars soon began to 
 manifest their power. Before Jerome had been many 
 days in the world the woman into whose charge he had 
 been given was seized with the plague and died the same 
 day, whereupon his mother took him home with her. 
 The first of his bodily ailments, the catalogue of the 
 same which he subsequently gives is indeed a portentous 
 one, 3 was an eruption of carbuncles on the face in the 
 form of a cross, one of the sores being set on the tip of 
 
 1 " Igitur ut ab initio exordiar, in pestilentia conceptus, matrem, 
 nondum natus (ut puto) mearum calamitatum participem, profugam 
 habui." Opera, torn. i. p. 618. 
 
 " Mater ut abortiret medicamentum abortivum dum in utero 
 essem, alieno mandate bibit." De Utilitate, p. 347. 
 
 2 De Vita Propria, ch. ii. p. 6. 
 
 3 In one passage, De Utilitate, p. 348, he sums up his physical 
 misfortunes: " Hydrope, febribus, aliisque morbis conflictatus sum, 
 donee sub fine octavi anni ex dysenteria ac febre usque ad mortis 
 limina perveni, pulsavi ostium sed non aperuere qui intro erant.' 5 
 
6 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 the nose; and when these disappeared, swellings came. 
 Before the boy was two months old his godfather, Isidore 
 di Resta of Ticino, gave him into the care of another 
 nurse who lived at Moirago, a town about seven miles 
 from Milan, but here again ill fortune attended him. 
 His body began to waste and his stomach to swell because 
 the nurse who gave him suck was herself pregnant. 1 A 
 third foster-mother was found for him, and he remained 
 with her till he was weaned in his third year. 
 
 When he was four years of age he was taken to Milan 
 to be under the care of his mother, who, with her sister, 
 Margarita, was living in Fazio's house ; but whether she 
 was at this time legally married to him or not there is no 
 evidence to show. In recording this change he remarks 
 that he now came under a gentler discipline from the 
 hands of his mother and his aunt, but immediately after- 
 wards proclaims his belief that the last-named must have 
 been born without a gall bladder, a remark somewhat 
 difficult to apply, seeing he frequently complains after- 
 wards of her harshness. It must be remembered, how- 
 ever, that these details are taken from a record of the 
 writer's fifth year set down when he was past seventy. 2 
 He quotes certain lapses from kindly usage, as for 
 instance when it happened that he was beaten by his 
 father or his mother without a cause. After much 
 chastisement he always fell sick, and lay some time 
 in mortal danger. "When I was seven years old my 
 father and my mother were then living apart my 
 kinsfolk determined, for some reason or other, to give 
 over beating me, though perchance a touch of the whip 
 
 " Inde lac praegnantis hausi per varias nutrices lactatus ac 
 jactatus." De Utilitate, p. 348. 
 
 2 The De Vita Propria, the chief authority for these remarks, was 
 written by Cardan in Rome shortly before his death. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 7 
 
 might then have done me no harm. But ill-fortune 
 was ever hovering around me; she let my tribulation 
 take a different shape, but she did not remove it. My 
 father, having hired a house, took me and my mother 
 and my aunt to live with him, and made me always 
 accompany him in his rounds about the city. On this 
 account I, being taken at this tender age with my weak 
 body from a life of absolute rest and put to hard and 
 constant work, was seized at the beginning of my eighth 
 year with dysentery and fever, an ailment which was at 
 that time epidemic in our city. Moreover I had eaten 
 by stealth a vast quantity of sour grapes. But after I 
 had been visited by the physicians, Bernabo della Croce 
 and Angelo Gyra, there seemed to be some hope of my 
 recovery, albeit both my parents, and my aunt as well, 
 had already bewept me as one dead. 
 
 " At this season my father, who was at heart a man of 
 piety, was minded to invoke the divine assistance of San 
 Girolamo (commending me to the care of the Saint in 
 his prayers) rather than trust to the working of that 
 familiar spirit which, as he was wont to declare openly, 
 was constantly in attendance upon him. The reason of 
 this change in his treatment of me I never cared to 
 inquire. It was during the time of my recovery from 
 this sickness, that the French celebrated their triumph 
 after defeating the Venetians on the banks of the Adda, 
 which spectacle I was allowed to witness from my 
 window. 1 After this my father freed me of the task of 
 going with him on his rounds. But the anger of Juno 
 was not yet exhausted; for, before I had fully recovered 
 
 1 The illness would have occurred about October 1508, and the 
 victory of the Adda was on May 14, 1509. This fact fixes his birth 
 in 1501, and shows that his illness must have lasted six or seven 
 months. 
 
8 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 my health, I fell down-stairs (we were then living in the 
 Via dei Maini), with a hammer in my hand, and by this 
 accident I hurt the left side of my forehead, injuring the 
 bone and causing a scar which remains to this day. 
 Before I had recovered from this mishap I was sitting 
 on the threshold of the house when a stone, about as 
 long and as broad as a nut, fell down from the top of a 
 high house next door and wounded my head just where 
 my hair grew very thickly on the left side. 
 
 " At the beginning of my tenth year my father changed 
 this house, which had proved a very unlucky one for me, 
 for another in the same street, and there I abode for 
 three whole years. But my ill luck still followed me, 
 for my father once more caused me to go about with 
 him as his famulus, and would never allow me on any 
 pretext to escape this task. I should hesitate to say 
 that he did this through cruelty; for, taking into con- 
 sideration what ensued, you may perchance be brought 
 to see that this action of his came to pass rather through 
 the will of Heaven than through any failing of his own. 
 I must add too that my mother and my aunt were fully 
 in agreement with him in his treatment of me. In after 
 times, however, he dealt with me in much milder fashion, 
 for he took to live with him two of his nephews, where- 
 fore my own labour was lessened by the amount of 
 service he exacted from these. Either I did not go out 
 at all, or if we all went out together the task was less 
 irksome. 
 
 "When I had completed my sixteenth year up to 
 which time I served my father constantly we once more 
 changed our house, and dwelt with Alessandro Cardano 
 next door to the bakery of the Bossi. My father had 
 two other nephews, sons of a sister of his, one named 
 Evangelista, a member of the Franciscan Order, and 
 
JEROME CARDAN 9 
 
 nearly seventy years of age, and the other Otto Cantone, 
 a farmer of the taxes, and very rich. The last-named, 
 before he died, wished to leave me his sole heir ; but this 
 my father forbad, saying that Otto's wealth had been ill 
 gotten; wherefore the estate was distributed according 
 to the directions of the surviving brother." l 
 
 This, told as nearly as may be in his own words, is 
 the story of Cardan's birth and childhood and early 
 discipline, a discipline ill calculated to let him grow up 
 to useful and worthy manhood. It must have been a 
 wretched spring of life. Many times he refers to the 
 hard slavery he underwent in the days when he was 
 forced to carry his father's bag about the town, and tells 
 how he had to listen to words of insult cast at his 
 mother's name. 2 Like most boys who lead solitary lives, 
 unrelieved by the companionship of other children, he was 
 driven in upon himself, and grew up into a fanciful 
 imaginative youth, a lover of books rather than of games, 
 with an old head upon his young shoulders. After such 
 a training it was only natural that he should be trans- 
 formed from a nervous hysterical child into an embittered, 
 cross-grained man, profligate and superstitious at the 
 same time. Abundant light is thrown upon every stage 
 of his career, for few men have left a clearer picture of 
 themselves in their written words, and nowhere is Cardan, 
 from the opening to the closing scene, so plainly ex- 
 hibited as in the De Vita Propria, almost the last work 
 which came from his pen. It has been asserted that 
 this book, written in the twilight of senility by an old 
 man with his heart cankered by misfortune and ill- 
 usage, and his brain upset by the dread of real or fancied 
 assaults of foes who lay in wait for him at every turn, is 
 no trustworthy guide, even when bare facts are in 
 
 1 De Vita Propria, ch. iv. p. H. 2 Opera^ torn. i. p. 676. 
 
io JEROME CARDAN 
 
 question, and undoubtedly it would be undesirable to 
 trust this record without seeking confirmation elsewhere- 
 This confirmation is nearly always at hand, for there is 
 hardly a noteworthy event in his career which he does 
 not refer to constantly in the more autobiographic of his 
 works. The De Vita Propria is indeed ill arranged and 
 full of inconsistencies, but in spite of its imperfections, it 
 presents its subject as clearly and effectively as Benvenuto 
 Cellini is displayed in his own work. The rough sketch 
 of a great master often performs its task more thoroughly 
 than the finished painting, and Cardan's autobiography 
 is a fragment of this sort. It lets pass in order of pro- 
 cession the moody neglected boy in Fazio's ill-ordered 
 house, the student at Pavia, the youthful Rector of the 
 Paduan Gymnasium, plunging when just across the 
 threshold of life into criminal excess of Sardanapalean 
 luxury, the country doctor at Sacco and afterwards at 
 Gallarate, starving amongst his penniless patients, the 
 University professor, the famous physician for whose 
 services the most illustrious monarchs in Europe came 
 as suppliants in vain, the father broken by family 
 disgrace and calamity, and the old man, disgraced and 
 suspected and harassed by persecutors who shot their 
 arrows in the dark, but at the same time tremblingly 
 anxious to set down the record of his days before the 
 night should descend. 
 
 Until he had completed his nineteenth year Jerome 
 continued to dwell under the roof which for the time 
 being might give shelter to his parents. The emolu- 
 ments which Fazio drew from his profession were suffi- 
 cient for the family wants he himself being a man of 
 simple tastes ; wherefore Jerome was not forced, in 
 addition to his other youthful troubles, to submit to 
 that execrata paupertas and its concomitant miseries 
 
JEROME CARDAN n 
 
 which vexed him in later years. To judge from his 
 conduct in the matter of Otto Cantone's estate, *. Fazio 
 seems to have been as great a despiser of wealth as his 
 son proved to be afterwards. His virtue, such as it was, 
 must have been the outcome of one of those hard cold 
 natures, with wants few and trifling, and none of those 
 tastes which cry out daily for some new toy, only to be 
 procured by. money. The fact that he made his son run 
 after him through the streets of Milan in place of a 
 servant is not a conclusive proof of avarice ; it may just 
 as likely mean that the old man was indifferent and 
 callous to whatever suffering he might inflict upon his 
 young son, and indisposed to trouble himself about 
 searching for a hireling to carry his bag. The one in- 
 dication we gather of his worldly wisdom is his dissatis- 
 faction that his son was firmly set to follow medicine 
 rather than jurisprudence, a step which would involve 
 the loss of the stipend of one hundred crowns a year 
 which he drew for his lectureship, an income which he 
 had hoped might be continued to a son of his after his 
 death. 1 
 
 Amidst the turmoil and discomfort of what must at 
 the best have been a most ill-regulated household, the 
 boy's education was undertaken by his father in such 
 odds and ends of time as he might find to spare for the 
 task. 2 What with the hardness and irritability of the 
 teacher, and the peevishness inseparable from the 
 
 1 " Quod munus profitendi institutiones in urbe ipsa cum honor- 
 ario centum coronatorum, quo jam tot annis gaudebat, non in me 
 (ut speraverat) transiturum intelligebat." De Vita Propria, ch. x. 
 
 P- 35- 
 
 2 "Pater jam ante concesserat ut Geometric et Dialecticae 
 operam darem, in quo (quanquam praster paucas admonitiones, 
 librosque, ac licentiam, nullum aliud auxilium prasbuerit) eas 
 tamen ego (succicivis temporibus studens) interim feliciter sum 
 assecutus." De Consolatione, Opera, torn. i. p. 619. 
 
12 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 \ pupil's physical feebleness and morbid overwrought 
 1 mental habit, these hours of lessons must have been 
 irksome to both, and of little benefit. " In the meantime 
 my father taught me orally the Latin tongue as well as 
 the rudiments of Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astrology. 
 But he allowed me to sleep well into the day, and 
 he himself would always remain abed till nine o'clock. 
 But one habit of his appeared to me likely to lead to 
 grave consequences, to wit the way he had of lending to 
 others anything which belonged to him. Part of these 
 loans, which were made to insolvents, he lost altogether ; 
 and the residue, lent to divers persons in high places, 
 could only be recovered with much trouble and no little 
 danger, and with loss of all interest on the same. I 
 know not whether he acted in this wise by the advice of 
 that familiar spirit 1 whose services he retained for eight- 
 and-thirty years. What afterwards came to pass showed 
 that my father treated me, his son, rightly in all things 
 relating to education, seeing that I had a keen intelli- 
 gence. For with boys of this sort it is well to make use 
 of the bit as though you were dealing with mules. Be- 
 yond this he was witty and diverting in his conversation, 
 and given to the telling of stories and strange occur- 
 rences well worth notice. He told me many things 
 about familiar spirits, but what part of these were true I 
 know not ; but assuredly tales of this sort, wonderful in 
 themselves and artfully put together, delighted me 
 marvellously. 
 
 1 " Facius Cardanus dsemonem astherium, ut ipse dicebat, diu 
 familiarem habuit ; qui quamdiu conjuratione usus est, vera illi 
 dabat responsa, cum autem illam exussisset, veniebat quidem, sed 
 responsa falsa dabat. Tenuit igitur annis, ni fallor, vinginti octo cum 
 conjuratione, solutum autem circiter quinque." De Varietate, p. 629. 
 In the Dialogus Tetim (Opera, torn. i. p. 672), Cardan writes : 
 " Pater honeste obiit et ex senio, sed multo antea eum Genius ille 
 reliquerat." 
 
JEROME CARDAN 13 
 
 " But what chiefly deserved condemnation in my father 
 was that he brought up certain other youths with the 
 intention of leaving to them his goods in case I should 
 die ; which thing, in sooth; meant nothing less than the 
 exposure of myself to open danger through plots of the 
 parents of the boys aforesaid, on account of the prize 
 offered. Over this affair my father and my mother 
 quarrelled grievously, and finally decided to live apart. 
 Whereupon my mother, stricken by this mental vexation, 
 and troubled at intervals with what I deem to have been 
 an hysterical affection, fell one day full on the back of 
 her neck, and struck her head upon the floor, which was 
 composed of tiles. It was two or three hours before she 
 came round, and indeed her recovery was little short of 
 miraculous, especially as at the end of her seizure she 
 foamed much at the mouth. 
 
 " In the meantime I altered the whole drift of this 
 tragedy by a pretended adoption of the religious life, for 
 I became for a time a member of the mendicant Fran- 
 ciscan brotherhood. But at the beginning of my 
 twenty-first year 1 I went to the Gymnasium at Pavia, 
 whereupon my father, feeling my absence, was softened 
 towards me, and a reconciliation between him and my 
 mother took place. 
 
 " Before this time I had learnt music, my mother and 
 even my father having secretly given me money for the 
 same ; my father likewise paid* for my instruction in 
 dialectics. I became so proficient in this art that I 
 taught it to certain other youths before I went to the 
 University. Thus he sent me there endowed with the 
 means of winning an honest living ; but he never once 
 
 1 There is a discrepancy between this date and the one given in 
 De Vita Propria, ch. iv. p. n. "Anno exacto XIX contuli me in 
 Ticinensem Academiam." 
 
14 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 spake a word to me concerning this matter, bearing 
 himself always towards me in considerate, kindly, and 
 pious wise. 
 
 " For the residue of his days (and he lived on well-nigh 
 four more years) his life was a sad one, as if he would 
 fain let it be known to the world how much he loved 
 me. 1 Moreover, when by the working of fate I returned 
 home while he lay sick, he besought, he commanded, 
 nay he even forced me, all unwilling, to depart thence, 
 what though he knew his last hour was nigh, for the 
 reason that the plague was in the city, and he was fain 
 that I should put myself beyond danger from the same. 
 Even now my tears rise when I think of his goodwill to- 
 wards me. But, my father, I will do all the justice I can 
 to thy merit and to thy paternal care ; and, as long as 
 these pages may be read, so long shall thy name and thy 
 virtues be celebrated. He was a man not to be cor- 
 rupted by any offering whatsoever, and indeed a saint. 
 But I myself was left after his death involved in many 
 lawsuits, having nothing clearly secured except one small 
 house." 2 
 
 Fazio contracted a close intimacy with a certain 
 Galeazzo Rosso, a man clever as a smith, and endowed 
 with mechanical tastes which no doubt helped to secure 
 him Fazio's friendship. Galeazzo discovered the prin- 
 ciple of the water-screw of Archimedes before the descrip- 
 tion of the same, written in the books of the inventor, 
 had been published. He also made swords which could 
 be bent as if they were of lead, and sharp enough to cut 
 iron like wood. He performed a more wonderful feat 
 
 1 "Inde (desiderium augente absentia) mortuus est, saeviente 
 peste, cum primum me diligere ccepisset." De Consolatione, Opera, 
 torn. i. p. 619. 
 
 2 De Utilitate, p. 348. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 15 
 
 in fashioning iron breast-plates which would resist the 
 impact of red-hot missiles. In the De Sapientia, Cardan 
 records that when Galeazzo perfected his water-screw, 
 he lost his wits for joy. 
 
 Fazio took no trouble to teach his son Latin, 1 though 
 the learned language would have been just as neces- 
 sary for the study of jurisprudence as for any other 
 liberal calling, and Jerome did not begin to study it 
 systematically till he was past nineteen years of age. 
 Through some whim or prejudice the old man refused 
 for some time to allow the boy to go to the University, 
 and when at last he gave his consent he still fought hard 
 to compel Jerome to qualify himself in jurisprudence ; 
 but here he found himself at issue with a will more 
 stubborn than his own. Cardan writes : " From my 
 earliest youth I let every action of mine be regulated in 
 view of the after course of my life, and I deemed that as 
 a career medicine would serve my purpose far better 
 than law, being more appropriate for the end I had in 
 view, of greater interest to the world at large, and likely 
 to last as long as time itself. At the same time I 
 regarded it as a study which embodied the nobler 
 principles, and rested upon the ground of reason (that 
 is upon the eternal laws of Nature) rather than upon the 
 sanction of human opinion. On this account I took up 
 medicine rather than jurisprudence, nay I almost entirely 
 cast aside, or even fled from the company of those 
 friends of mine who followed the law, rejecting at the 
 same time wealth and power and honour. My father, 
 when he heard that I had abandoned the study of law 
 to follow philosophy, wept in my presence, and grieved 
 amain that I would not settle down to the study of his 
 
 1 " Nimis satis fuit defuisse tot, memoriam, linguam Latinam per 
 adolescentiam." De Vita Propria, ch. li. p. 218. 
 
1 6 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 own subject. He deemed it the more salutary discipline 
 proofs of which opinion he would often bring forward 
 out of Aristotle that it was better adapted for the 
 acquisition of power and riches ; and that it would help 
 me more efficiently in restoring the fortunes of our 
 house. He perceived moreover that the office of teach- 
 ing in the schools of the city, together with its accom- 
 panying salary of a hundred crowns which he had 
 enjoyed for so many years, would not be handed on to 
 me, as he had hoped, and he saw that a stranger would 
 succeed to the same. Nor was that commentary of his 
 destined ever to see the light or to be illustrated by my 
 notes. Earlier in life he had nourished a hope that his 
 name might become illustrious as the emendator of the 
 ' Commentaries of John, Archbishop of Canterbury on 
 Optics and Perspective/ l Indeed the following verses 
 were printed thereanent : 
 
 4 Hoc Cardana viro gaudet domus : omnia novit 
 Unus : habent nullum saecula nostra parem.' 
 
 " These words may be taken as a sort of augury re- 
 ferring rather to certain other men about to set forth to do 
 their work in the world, than to my father, who, except 
 in the department of jurisprudence (of which indeed 
 
 1 John Peckham was a Franciscan friar, and was nominated to 
 the see of Canterbury by Nicholas III. in 1279. He had spent 
 much time in the convent of his Order at Oxford, and there is a 
 legend connecting him with a Johannes Juvenis or John of London, 
 a youth who had attracted the attention and benevolence of Roger 
 Bacon. This Johannes became one of the first mathematicians 
 and opticians of the age, and was sent to Rome by Bacon, who 
 entrusted to him the works which he was sending to Pope Clement 
 IV. There is no reason for this view beyond the fact that both 
 were called John, and distinguished in the same branches of learn- 
 ing. The Perspectiva Communis was his principal work ; it does 
 not deal with perspective as now understood, but with elementary 
 propositions of optics. It was first printed in Milan in or about 1482. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 17 
 
 rumour says that he was a master), never let his mind 
 take in aught that was new. The rudiments of mathe- 
 matics were all that he possessed, and he gathered no 
 fresh knowledge from the store-houses of Greek learning. 
 This disposition in him was probably produced by the 
 vast multitude of subjects to be mastered, and by his 
 infirmity of purpose, rather than by any lack of natural 
 parts, or by idleness or by defect of judgment ; vices 
 to which he was in no way addicted. But I, being 
 firmly set upon the object of my wishes, for the reasons 
 given above, and because I perceived that my father 
 had achieved only moderate success though he had en- 
 countered but few hindrances remained unconvinced 
 by any of his exhortations." 1 
 
 1 De Vita Propria, ch. x. p. 34. A remark in De Sapientia^ Opera, 
 torn. i. p. 578, suggests that Fazio began life as a physician : " Pater 
 meus Facius Cardanus Medicus prime, inde Jurisconsultus factus 
 est." 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE University of Pavia to which Jerome now betook 
 himself was by tradition one of the learned foundations 
 of Charlemagne. 1 It had certainly enjoyed a high reput- 
 ation all through the Middle Ages, and had recently 
 had the honour of numbering Laurentius Valla amongst 
 its professors. In 1362, Galeazzo Visconti had obtained 
 a charter for it from the Emperor Charles IV., and that 
 it had become a place of consequence in 1400 is proved 
 by the fact that, besides maintaining several professors 
 in the Canon Law, it supported thirteen in Civil Law, 
 five in Medicine, three in Philosophy, and one each in 
 Astrology, Greek, and Eloquence. Like all the other 
 Universities of Northern Italy, it suffered occasional 
 eclipse or even extinction on account of the constant war 
 and desolation which vexed these parts almost without 
 intermission during the years following the formation 
 of the League of Cambrai. Indeed, as recently as 1500, 
 the famous library collected by Petrarch, and presented 
 by Gian Galeazzo Visconti to the University, was 
 carried off by the French. 2 
 
 1 Pavia, like certain modern universities, did not spend all its 
 time over study. " Aggressus sum Mediolani vacationibus quadra- 
 genariae, seu Bacchanalium potius, anni MDLXI. Ita enim non 
 obscurum est, nostra aetate celebrari ante quadragenariam vaca- 
 tiones, in quibus ludunt, convivantur, personati ac larvati incedunt, 
 denique nullum luxus ac lascivae genus omittunt : Sybaritas et Lydi 
 Persaeque vincuntur." Opera, torn. i. p. 118. 
 
 2 These books were taken to Blois. They were subsequently 
 
 18 
 
JEROME CARDAN 19 
 
 To judge from the pictures which the Pavlan student, 
 writing in after years, gives of his physical self, it may 
 be inferred that he was ill-endowed by the Graces. " I 
 am of middle height. My chest is somewhat narrow 
 and my arms exceedingly thin : my right hand is the 
 more grossly fashioned of the two, so that a chiroman- 
 tist might have set me down as rude or doltish : indeed, 
 should such an one examine my hand, he would be 
 ashamed to say what he thought. In it the line of life 
 is short, and that named after Saturn long and well 
 marked. My left hand, however, is seemly, with fingers 
 long, tapering, and well-set, and shining nails. My neck 
 is longer and thinner than the rule, my chin is divided, 
 my lower lip thick and pendulous, my eyes are very 
 small, and it is my wont to keep them half-closed, per- 
 adventure lest I should discern things over clearly. My 
 forehead is wide and bare of hair where it meets the 
 temples. My hair and beard are both of them yellow 
 in tint, and both as a rule kept close cut. My chin, 
 which as I have said already is marked by a division, is 
 covered in its lower part with a thick growth of long 
 hair. My habit is to speak in a highly-pitched voice, so 
 that my friends sometimes rebuke me thereanent ; but, 
 harsh and loud as is my voice, it cannot be heard at any 
 great distance while I am lecturing. I am wont to talk 
 too much, and in none too urbane a tone. The look of 
 my eyes is fixed, like that of one in deep thought. My 
 front teeth are large, and my complexion red and white : 
 the form of my countenance being somewhat elongated, 
 and my head is finished off in narrow wise at the back, 
 like to a small sphere. Indeed, it was no rare thing for 
 the painters, who came from distant countries to paint 
 
 removed by Francis I. to Fontainebleau, and with the other collec- 
 tions formed the nucleus of the Bibliotheque Nationale. 
 
20 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 my portrait, to affirm that they could find no special 
 characteristic which they could use for the rendering of 
 my likeness, so that I might be known by the same." 1 
 
 After giving this account of his person, Cardan writes 
 down a catalogue of the various diseases which vexed 
 him from time to time, a chapter of autobiography which 
 looks like a transcript from a dictionary of Nosology. 
 More interesting is the sketch which he makes of his 
 mental state during these early years. Boys brought 
 up in company of their elders often show a tendency 
 to introspection, and fall into a dreamy whimsical mood, 
 3 and his case is a striking example. " By the command 
 of my father I used to lie abed until nine o'clock, 2 and, 
 if perchance I lay awake any time before the wonted 
 hour of rising, it was my habit to spend the same by 
 conjuring up to sight all sorts of pleasant visions, nor 
 can I remember that I ever summoned these in vain. I 
 used to behold figures of divers kinds like airy bodies. 
 Meseemed they were made up of tiny rings, like those 
 in coats of chain-armour, though at this time I had 
 seen nought of the kind. They would rise at the bottom 
 of the bed, from the right-hand corner ; and, moving in 
 a semi-circle, would pass slowly on and disappear in the 
 left. Moreover I beheld the shapes of castles and 
 houses, of horses and riders, of plants, trees, musical 
 instruments, theatres, dresses of men of all sorts, and 
 flute-players who seemed to be playing upon their 
 instruments, but neither voice nor sound was heard 
 therefrom. And besides these things I beheld soldiers, 
 and crowds of men, and fields, and certain bodily forms, 
 which seem hateful to me even now : groves and forests, 
 
 1 De Vita Propria, ch. v. p. 18. 
 
 2 The time covered by this experience was from his fourth to his 
 seventh year. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 21 
 
 and divers other things which I now forget. In all this 
 I took no small delight, and with straining eyes I would 
 gaze upon these marvels ; wherefore my Aunt Margaret 
 asked me more than once whether I saw anything. I, 
 though I was then only a child, deliberated over this 
 question of hers before I replied, saying to myself: * If I 
 tell her the facts she will be wroth at the thing whatever 
 it may be which is the cause of these phantasms, and will 
 deprive me of this delight/ And then I seemed to see 
 flowers of all kinds, and four-footed beasts, and birds ; 
 but all these, though they were fashioned most beauti- 
 fully, were lacking in colour, for they were things of air. 
 Therefore I, who neither as a boy nor as an old man 
 ever learned to lie, stood silent for some time. Then 
 my aunt said 'Boy, what makes you stare thus and 
 stand silent ? ' I know not what answer I made, but I 
 think I said nothing at all. In my dreams I fre- 
 quently saw what seemed to be a cock, which I feared 
 might speak to me in a human voice. This in sooth 
 came to pass later on, and the words it spake were 
 threatening ones, but I cannot now recall what I may 
 have heard on these occasions." l 
 
 With a brain capable of such remarkable exercises as 
 the above-written vision, living his life in an atmosphere 
 of books, and with all games and relaxations dear to 
 boys of his age denied to him, it was no marvel that 
 Jerome should make an early literary essay on his own 
 account. The death of a young kinsman, Niccolo 
 Cardano, 2 suggested to him a theme which he elaborated 
 in a tract called De immortalitate paranda, a work which 
 perished unlamented by its author, and a little later he 
 wrote a treatise on the calculation of the distances between 
 
 1 De Vita Propria, ch. xxxvii. p. 114; De Rerum Subtilitate 
 (Basil, 1554), p. 524. 2 Opera, torn. i. p. 61. 
 
22 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 the various heavenly bodies. 1 But he put his mathe- 
 matical skill to other and more sinister uses than this ; 
 for, having gained practical experience at the gaming- 
 tables, he combined this experience with his knowledge 
 of the properties of numbers, and wrote a tract on games 
 of chance. Afterwards he amplified this into his book, 
 Liber de Ludo Alece. 
 
 With this equipment and discipline Jerome went to 
 Pavia in 1520. He found lodging in the house of 
 Giovanni Ambrogio Targio, and until the end of his 
 twenty-first year he spent all his time between Pavia 
 and Milan. By this date he had made sufficiently good 
 use of his time to let the world see of what metal he was 
 formed, for in the year following he had advanced far 
 enough in learning to dispute in public, to teach Euclid 
 in the Gymnasium, and to take occasional classes in 
 Dialectics and Elementary Philosophy. At the end of 
 his twenty-second year the country was convulsed by 
 the wars between the Spaniards and the French under 
 Lautrec, which ended in the expulsion of the last-named 
 and the establishment of the Imperial power in Milan. 
 Another result of the war, more germane to this history, 
 was the closing of the University of Pavia through lack 
 funds. In consequence of this calamity Jerome 
 remained some time in Milan, and during these months 
 he worked hard at mathematics ; but he was not 
 destined to return to Pavia as a student. The schools 
 there remained some long time in confusion, so in 1524 
 he went with his father's consent to Padua. In the 
 autumn of that same year he was summoned back to 
 Milan to find Fazio in the grip of his dying illness. 
 
 1 " Erat liber exiguus, rem tamen probe absolvebat : nam tune 
 forte in manus meas inciderat, Gebri Hispani liber, cujus auxilio 
 non parum adjutus sum." Opera, torn. i. p. 56. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 23 
 
 "Whereupon he, careful of my weal rather than his 
 own, bade me return to Padua at once, being well 
 pleased to hear that I had taken at the Venetian 
 College the Baccalaureat of Arts. 1 After my return to 
 Padua, letters were brought to me which told me that he 
 had died on the ninth day after he had refused nourish- 
 ment. He^died^on the twenty-eighth_of August, 
 having last eaten on Sunday the twentieth of the month. 
 Towards the close of my twenty-fourth year I was chosen 
 Rector of the Academy at Padua/ anctaEihe eaE oTthe 
 next was made Doctor of Medicine. For the first- 
 named office I came out the victor by one vote, the 
 suffrages having to be cast a second time ; and for the 
 Doctorate of Medicine my name had already twice 
 come forth from the ballot with forty-seven votes 
 cast against me (a circumstance which forbade another 
 voting after the third), when, at the third trial, I came 
 out the winner, with only nine votes against me 
 (previously only this same number had been cast for 
 me), and with forty-eight in my favour. 
 
 "Though I know well enough that affairs like these 
 must needs be of small account, I have set them down 
 in the order in which they came to pass for no other 
 
 1 " Initio multi quidem paupertate aliave causa quum se nolunt 
 subjicere rigoroso examini Cl. Collegii in artibus Medicinae vel 
 in Jure, Baccalaureatus, vel Doctoratus gradum a Comitibus Pala- 
 tinis aut Lateranensibus sumebant. Postea vero, sublata hac con- 
 suetudine, Gymnasii Rector, sive substitutus, convocatis duobus 
 professoribus, bina puncta dabantur, iisque recitatis et diligentis [sic] 
 excussis, illis gradus Baccalaureatus conferebatur." Gymnasium 
 Patavinum (1654), p. 200. 
 
 2 He constantly bewails this step as the chief folly of his life : 
 * Stulte vero id egi, quod Rector Gymnasii Patavini effectus sum, 
 turn, cum, inops essem, et in patria maxime bella vigerent, et 
 tributa intolerabilia. Matris tamen solicitudine effectum est, ut 
 pondus impensarum, quamvis aegre, sustinuerim." De Utilitate^ 
 P- 
 
24 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 reason than that I give pleasure to myself who write 
 these words by so doing: and I do not write for the 
 gratification of others. At the same time those people 
 who read what I write if indeed any one should 
 ever be so minded may learn hereby that the begin- 
 nings and the outcomes of great events may well be 
 found difficult to trace, because in sooth it is the way of 
 such things to corne to the notice of anybody rather 
 than of those who would rightly observe them." l 
 
 Padua cannot claim for its University an antiquity 
 as high as that which may be conceded to Pavia, but in 
 spite of its more recent origin, there is no little obscurity 
 surrounding its rise. The one fact which may be put 
 down as certain is that it sprang originally from the 
 University of Bologna. Early in the thirteenth century 
 violent discords arose between the citizens of Bologna 
 and the students, and there is a tradition that the 
 general school of teaching was transferred to Padua in 
 1222. What happened was probably a large migration 
 of students, part of whom remained behind when peace 
 between town and gown in Bologna was restored. The 
 orthodox origin of the University is a charter granted 
 by Frederic II. in 1238. Frederic at this time was 
 certainly trying to injure Bologna, actuated by a desire 
 to help on his own University at Naples, and to crush 
 Bologna as a member of the Lombard League. 2 Padua, 
 however, was also a member of this league, so his 
 benevolent action towards it is difficult to understand. 
 In 1228 the students had quarrelled with the Paduan 
 citizens, and there was a movement to migrate to 
 Vercelli ; but, whether this really took place or not, the 
 Paduan school did not suffer: its ruin and extinction 
 
 1 De VitaPropria, ch. iv. p. n. 
 
 2 Muratori, Chron. di Bologna, xviii. 254. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 25 
 
 was deferred till the despotism of the Ezzelini. In 1260 
 it was again revived by a second migration from Bologna, 
 and this movement was increased on account of the 
 interdict laid by the Pope upon Bologna in 1306 after 
 the expulsion of the Papal Legate by the citizens. 
 
 In the early days Medicine and Arts were entirely 
 subordinate to the schools of canon and civil law ; but 
 by the end of the fourteenth century these first-named 
 Faculties had obtained a certain degree of independence, 
 and were allowed an equal share in appointing the 
 Rector. 1 The first College was founded in 1363, and 
 after 1500 the number rapidly increased. The dominion 
 of the Dukes of Carrara after 1322 was favourable to 
 the growth of the University, which, however, did not 
 attain its highest point till it came under Venetian rule 
 in 1404. The Venetian government raised the stipends 
 of the professors, and allowed four Paduan citizens to 
 act as Tutores Studii ; the election of the professors 
 being vested in the students, which custom obtained 
 until the end of the sixteenth century. 2 The Rector 
 was allowed to wear a robe of purple and gold ; and, 
 when he retired, the degree of Doctor was granted to 
 him, together with the right to wear the golden collar of 
 the order of Saint Mark. 
 
 Padua like Athens humanized its conquerors. It 
 became the University town of Venice, as Pavia was of 
 Milan, and it was for a long time protected from the 
 assaults of the Catholic reaction by its rulers, who 
 
 1 The stipends paid to teachers of jurisprudence were much 
 more liberal than those paid to humanists. In the Diary of 
 Sanudo it is recorded that a jurist professor at Padua received 
 a thousand ducats per annum. Lauro Quirino, a professor of 
 rhetoric, meantime received only forty ducats, and Laurentius Valla 
 at Pavia received fifty sequins. Muratori, xxii. 990. 
 
 2 Tomasinus, Gymnasium Patavinam (1654), p. 136. 
 
26 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 possibly were instigated rather by political jealousy of 
 the Papacy as a temporal power, than by any enthusi- 
 asm for the humanist and scientific studies of which 
 Padua was the most illustrious home south of the Alps ; 
 studies which the powers of the Church began already to 
 recognize as their most dangerous foes. 
 
 Such was the University of Padua at the height of 
 its glory, and it will be apparent at once that Padua 
 must have fallen considerably in its fortunes when it 
 installed as its Rector an obscure student, only twenty- 
 four years of age, and of illegitimate birth, and conferred 
 upon him the right to go clad in purple and gold, and 
 to claim, as his retiring gift, the degree of Doctor and 
 the cross of Saint Mark. In 1508 the League of 
 Cambrai had been formed, and Venice, not yet re- 
 covered from the effects of its disastrous wars with 
 Bajazet II., was forced to meet the combined assault of 
 the Pope, the Emperor, and the King of France. Padua 
 was besieged by the Imperial forces, a motley horde of 
 Germans, Swiss, and Spaniards, and the surrounding 
 country was pillaged and devastated by these savages 
 with a cruelty which recalled the days of Attila. It is 
 not wonderful that the University closed its doors in 
 such a time. When the confederates began to fight 
 amongst themselves the class-rooms were reopened, 
 intermittently at first, but after 1515 the teaching seems 
 to have been continuous. Still the prevalent turmoil 
 and poverty rendered it necessary to curtail all the 
 mere honorary and ornamental adjuncts of the schools, 
 and for several years no Rector was appointed, for the 
 good and sufficient reason that no man of due position 
 and wealth and character could be found to undertake 
 the rectorial duties, with the Academy just emerging 
 from complete disorganization. These duties were many 
 
JEROME CARDAN 27 
 
 and important, albeit the Rector could, if he willed, 
 appoint a deputy, and the calls upon the purse of the 
 holder must have been very heavy. It would be hard to 
 imagine any one less fitted to fill such a post than Cardan, 
 and assuredly no office could befit him less than this 
 pseudo-rectorship. 1 It must ever remain a mystery why 
 he was preferred, why he was elected, and why he con- 
 sented to serve : though, as to the last-named matter, 
 he hints in a passage lately cited from De Utilitate^ that 
 it was through the persuasions of his mother that he 
 took upon himself this disastrous honour. Many pas- 
 ages in his writings suggest that Chiara was an indulgent 
 parent. She let Fazio have no peace till he consented 
 to allow the boy to go to college ; she paid secretly for 
 music-lessons, so that Jerome was enabled to enjoy the 
 relaxation he loved better than anything else in the 
 world except gambling ; she paid all his charges 
 during his student life at Padua ; and now, quite 
 naturally, she would have shed her heart's blood rather 
 than let this son of hers ugly duckling as he was 
 miss what she deemed to be the crowning honour of the 
 rectorship ; but after all the sacrifices Chiara made, 
 after all the misfortunes which attended Jerome's ill- 
 directed ambition, there is a doubt as to whether he 
 ever was Rector in the full sense of the term. Many 
 times and in divers works he affirms that once upon a 
 time he was Rector, and over and beyond this he sets 
 down in black and white the fact, more than once, that 
 he never told a lie; so it is only polite to accept this 
 
 1 Tomasinus writes that the Rector should be " Virum illustrem, 
 providum, eloquentem ac divitem, quique eo pollet rerum usu ut 
 Gymnasi decora ipsius gubernatione et splendore augeantur." 
 Gymnasium Patavinum, p. 54. He likewise gives a portrait of the 
 Rector in his robes of office, and devotes several chapters to an 
 account of his duties. 
 

 
 28 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 legend for what it is worth. But it must likewise be 
 noted that in the extant records of the University there 
 is no mention of his name in the lists of Rectors. 1 
 
 Jerome has left very few details as to his life at 
 ( Padua. Of those which he notices the following are 
 ^the most interesting: "In 1525, the year in which I 
 became Rector, I narrowly escaped drowning in the 
 x Lago di Garda. I went on board the boat, unwillingly 
 enough, which carried likewise some hired horses ; and, 
 as we sailed on, the mast and the rudder, and one of 
 the two oars we had with us, were broken by the wind. 
 The sails, even those on the smaller mast, were split, 
 and the night came on. We landed at last safe and 
 sound at Sirmio, but not before all my companions 
 had given up hope, and I myself was beginning to 
 despair. Indeed, had we been a minute later we must 
 have perished, for the tempest was so violent that the 
 iron hinges of the inn windows were bent thereby. I, 
 though I had been sore afraid ever since the wind 
 began to blow, fell to supper with a good heart when 
 the host set upon the board a mighty pike, but none 
 of the others had any stomach for food, except the one 
 passenger who had advised us to make trial of this 
 perilous adventure, and who had proved to be an able 
 and courageous helper in our hour of distress. 
 /^ "Again, once when I was in Venice on the birthday 
 \ of the Virgin, I lost some money at dicing, and on the 
 
 1 " Ab anno 1509 usque ad annum 1515 ob bellum Cameracense 
 Gymn. interrmissum fuit." Elenchns nominum Patavii ( 1 706), p. 
 28. The first names given after this interregnum are Dom. Jo. 
 Maria de Zaffaris, Rector in Arts, and Dom. Marinus de Ongaris, 
 Rector in Jurisprudence in 1527. 
 
 Papadapoli (Historia Gymn. Patav.} gives the name of As- 
 canius Serra as pro-Rector in 1526: no Rector being mentioned 
 at all. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 29 
 
 day following all that was left me went the same way. 
 This happened in the house of the man with whom I 
 was gambling, and in the course of play I noticed that 
 the cards were marked, whereupon I struck him in the 
 face with my dagger, wounding him slightly. Two of 
 his servants were present at the time ; some spears 
 hung all ready from the beams of the roof, and besides 
 this the house door was fastened. But when I had 
 taken from him all the money he had about him his 
 own as well as that which he had won from me by 
 cheating, and my cloak and the rings which I had 
 lost to him the day before I was satisfied that I had 
 got back all my possessions. The chattels I sent home 
 by my servant at once, but a portion of the money I 
 tossed back to the fellow when I saw that I had drawn 
 blood of him. Then I attacked the servants who were 
 standing by; and, as they knew not how to use their 
 weapons and besought my mercy, I granted this on the 
 condition that they should unlock the door. Their 
 master, taking account of the uproar and confusion, 
 and mistrusting his safety in case the affair should not 
 be settled forthwith (I suspect he was alarmed about 
 the marked cards), commanded the servants to open 
 the door, whereupon I went my way. 
 
 " That very same evening, while I was doing my best 
 to escape the notice of the officers of justice on account 
 of the wound I had given to this Senator, I lost my 
 footing and fell into a canal, having arms under my 
 cloak the while. In my fall I did not lose my nerve, 
 but flinging out my right arm, I grasped the thwart of a 
 passing boat and was rescued by those on board. When 
 I had been hauled into the boat I discovered wonderful 
 to relate that the man with whom I had lately played 
 cards was likewise on board, with his face bandaged by 
 
3 o JEROME CARDAN 
 
 reason of the wounds I had given him. Now of his own 
 accord he brought out a suit of clothes, fitted for seafar- 
 ing, and, having clad myself in them, I journeyed with 
 him as far as Padua." 1 
 /^Cardan's life from rise to set cannot be estimated 
 
 ^/otherwise than an unhappy one, and its least fortunate 
 years were probably those lying between his twenty-first 
 ^and his thirty-first year of age. During this period he 
 was guilty of that crowning folly, the acceptance of the 
 Rectorship of the Gymnasium at Padua, he felt the 
 sharpest stings of poverty, and his life was overshadowed 
 by dire physical misfortune. He gives a rapid sketch of 
 the year following his father's death. " Then, my father 
 
 ; having breathed his last and my term of office come to 
 an end, I went, at the beginning of my twenty-sixth 
 year, to reside at Sacco, a town distant ten miles from 
 Padua and twenty-five from Venice. I fixed on this 
 place by the advice of Francesco Buonafidei, a physician 
 of Padua, who, albeit I brought no profit to him not 
 even being one of those who attended his public teaching 
 helped me and took a liking for me, being moved to this 
 benevolence by his exceeding goodness of heart. In this 
 place I lived while our State was being vexed by every 
 sort of calamity. In 1524 by a raging pestilence and by 
 a two-fold change of ruler. In 1526 and 1527 by a 
 destructive scarcity of the fruits of the earth. It was 
 hard to get corn in exchange for money of any kind, and 
 over and beyond this was the intolerable weight of 
 taxation. In 1528 the land was visited by divers 
 diseases and by the plague as well, but these afflictions 
 seemed the easier to bear because all other parts were 
 likewise suffering from the same. In 1529! ventured to 
 return to Milan these ill-starred troubles being in some 
 1 De Vita Propria^ ch. xxx. p. 79. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 31 
 
 degree abated but I was refused membership by the 
 College of Physicians there, I was unable to settle my 
 lawsuit with the Barbiani, and I found my mother in a 
 very ill humour, so I went back to my village home, 
 having suffered greatly in health during my absence. 
 For what with cruel vexations, and struggles, and cares 
 which I saw impending, and a troublesome cough and 
 pleurisy aggravated by a copious discharge of humour, I 
 was brought into a condition such as few men exchange 
 for aught else besides a coffin." 1 
 
 The closing words of his eulogy on his father tell 
 how the son, on the father's death, found that one 
 small house was all he could call his own. The ex- 
 planation of this seems to be that the old man, being 
 of a careless disposition and litigious to boot, had left 
 his affairs in piteous disorder. In consequence of this 
 neglect Jerome was involved in lawsuits for many years, 
 and the one afore-mentioned with the Barbiani was one 
 of them. This case was subsequently settled in Jerome's 
 favour. 
 
 1 De Vita Propria, ch. iv. p. 13. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 / 
 
 DURING his life at Padua it would appear that 
 
 Cardan, over and above the allowance made to him by 
 his mother, had no other source of income than the 
 gaming-table. 1 However futile and disastrous his sojourn 
 at this University may have been, he at least took away 
 with him one possession of value, to wit his doctorate of 
 medicine, on the strength of which he began to practise 
 as a country physician at Sacco. The record of his 
 life during these years gives the impression that he 
 must have been one of the most wretched of living 
 mortals. The country was vexed by every sort of 
 misfortune, by prolonged warfare, by raging pestilence, 
 by famine, and by intolerable taxation ; 2 but while 
 he paints this picture of misery and desolation in 
 one place, he goes on to declare in another that the 
 time which he spent at Sacco was the happiest he ever 
 knew. 3 No greater instance of inconsistency is to be 
 found in his pages. He writes : " I gambled, I occupied 
 myself with music, I walked abroad, I feasted, giving 
 
 1 " Nee ullum mihi erat relictum auxilium nisi latrunculorum 
 Ludus." Opera, torn. i. p. 619. 
 
 2 From the formation of the League of Cambrai in 1508 to the 
 establishment of the Imperial supremacy in Italy in 1530, the whole 
 country was desolated by the marching and counter-marching of 
 the contending forces. Milan, lying directly in the path of the 
 French armies, suffered most of all. 
 
 3 Compare De Vita Propria, chaps, iv. and xxxi. pp. 13 and 92. 
 
 32 
 
JEROME CARDAN 33 
 
 scant attention the while to my studies. I feared no 
 hurt, I paid my respects to the Venetian gentlemen 
 living in the town, and frequented their houses. I, too, 
 was in the very flower of my age, and no time could 
 have been more delightful than this which lasted for 
 five years and a half." 1 
 
 But for almost the whole of this period Cardan was 
 labouring under a physical misfortune concerning which 
 he writes in another place in terms of almost savage 
 bitterness. During ten years of his life, from his twenty- 
 first to his thirty-first year, he suffered from the loss of 
 virile power, a calamity which he laments in the following 
 words : "And I maintain that this misfortune was to me 
 the worst of evils. Compared with it neither the harsh 
 servitude under my father, nor unkindness, nor the 
 troubles of litigation, nor the wrongs done me by my 
 fellow-townsmen, nor the scorn of my fellow-physicians, 
 nor the ill things falsely spoken against me, nor all the 
 measureless mass of possible evil, could have brought me 
 to such despair, and hatred of life, and distaste of all 
 pleasure, and lasting sorrow. I bitterly wept this misery, 
 that I must needs be a laughing-stock, that marriage 
 must be denied me, and that I must ever live in solitude. 
 You ask for the cause of this misfortune, a matter which 
 I am quite unable to explain. Because of the reasons 
 just mentioned, and because I dreaded that men should 
 know how grave was the ill afflicting me, I shunned the 
 society of women ; and, on account of this habit, the 
 same miserable public scandal which I desired so 
 earnestly to avoid, arose concerning me, and brought 
 upon me the suspicion of still more nefarious practices : 
 
 1 De Vita Propria, ch. xxxi. p. 92. In taking the other view he 
 writes : "Vitamducebam in Saccensi oppido, ut mihi videbar, infeli- 
 cissime." Opera^ torn. i. p. 97. 
 
 D 
 
34 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 in sooth it seemed that there was no further calamity 
 left for me to endure." 1 After reading these words, it is 
 hard to believe that a man, afflicted with a misfortune 
 which he characterizes in these terms, could have been 
 even moderately happy ; much less in that state of bliss 
 which he sits down to describe forty years afterwards. 
 ' But the end of his life at Sacco was fated to be 
 happier than the beginning, and it is possible that 
 memories of the last months he spent there may 
 have helped to colour with rosy tint the picture of 
 happiness recently referred to. In the first place he 
 was suddenly freed from his physical infirmity, and 
 shortly after his restoration he met and married the 
 woman who, as long as she lived with him, did all that 
 was possible to make him happy. Every momentous 
 event of Cardan's life and many a trifling one as well 
 was heralded by some manifestation of the powers 
 lying beyond man's cognition. In writing about the 
 signs and tokens which served as premonitions of his 
 courtship and marriage, he glides easily into a descrip- 
 tion of the events themselves in terms which are worth 
 producing. "In times past I had my home in Sacco, and 
 there I led a joyful life, as if I were a man un vexed by 
 misfortune (I recall this circumstance somewhat out of 
 season, but the dream I am about to tell of seems only 
 too appropriate to the occasion), or a mortal made free 
 of the habitations of the blest, or rather of some region 
 of delight. Then, on a certain night, I seemed to find 
 myself in a pleasant garden, beautiful exceedingly, 
 decked with flowers and filled with fruits of divers sorts, 
 and a soft air breathed around. So lovely was it all 
 that no painter nor our poet Pulci, nor any imagination 
 of man could have figured the like. I was standing in 
 1 De Utilitate, p. 235. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 35 
 
 the forecourt of this garden, the door whereof was open, 
 and there was another door on the opposite side, when 
 lo! I beheld before me a damsel clad in white. I 
 embraced and kissed her ; but before I could kiss her 
 again, the gardener closed the door. I straightway 
 begged him earnestly that he would open it again, but 
 I begged in vain ; wherefore, plunged in grief and 
 clinging to the damsel, I seemed to be shut out of the 
 garden. 
 
 "A little time after this there was a rumour in the 
 town of a house on fire, and I was roused from sleep 
 to hurry to the spot. Then I learned that the house 
 belonged to one Altobello Bandarini, 1 a captain of the 
 Venetian levies in the district of Padua. I had no 
 acquaintance with him, in sooth I scarcely knew him 
 by sight. Now it chanced that after the fire he hired 
 a house next door to my own, a step which displeased 
 me somewhat, for such a neighbour was not to my 
 taste ; but what was I to do ? After the lapse of a few 
 days, when I was in the street, I perceived a young 
 girl who, as to her face and her raiment, was the 
 exact image of her whom I had beheld in my dream. 
 But I said to myself, * What is this girl to me ? If 
 I, poor wretch that I am, take to wife a girl dowered 
 with naught, except a crowd of brothers and sisters, it 
 will be all over with me; forasmuch as I can hardly 
 keep myself as it is. If I should attempt to carry her 
 off, or to have my will of her by stealth, there will of a 
 surety be some tale-bearers about; and her father, being 
 a fellow-townsman and a soldier to boot, would not sit 
 down lightly under such an injury. In this case, or in 
 that, it is hard to say what course I should follow, for 
 
 1 He gives a long and interesting sketch of his father-in-law 
 in De Utilitate, p. 370. 
 
36 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 if this affair should come to the issue I most desire, I 
 must needs fly the place/ From that same hour these 
 thoughts and others akin to them possessed my brain, 
 which was only too ready to harbour them, and I felt 
 it would be better to die than to live on in such per- 
 plexity. Thenceforth I was as one love-possessed, or 
 even burnt up with passion, and I understood what 
 meaning I might gather from the reading of my dream. 
 Moreover I was by this time freed from the chain 
 which had held me back from marriage. Thus I, a 
 willing bridegroom, took a willing bride, her kinsfolk 
 questioning us how this thing had been brought about, 
 and offering us any help which might be of service ; 
 which help indeed proved of very substantial benefit. 
 
 " But the interpretation of my dreams did not work 
 itself out entirely in the after life of my wife ; it made 
 itself felt likewise in the lives of my children. My wife 
 lived with me fifteen years, and alas ! this ill-advised 
 marriage was the cause of all the misfortunes which 
 subsequently happened to me. These must have come 
 about either by the working of the divine will, or as 
 the recompense due for some ill deeds wrought by 
 myself or by my forefathers." l 
 
 The dream aforesaid was not the only portent having 
 reference to his marriage. After describing shakings 
 and tremblings of his bed, for which indeed a natural 
 cause was not far to seek, he tells how in 1531 a certain 
 dog, of gentle temper as a rule, and quiet, kept up a 
 persistent howling for a long time ; how some ravens 
 perched on the house-top and began croaking in an 
 unusual manner ; and how, when his servant was 
 breaking up a faggot, some sparks of fire flew out of the 
 same ; whereupon, " by an unlooked-for step I married 
 1 De Vita Propria, ch. xxvi. p. 68 ; Opera, torn. i. p. 97. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 37 
 
 a wife, and from that time divers misfortunes have 
 attended me." 1 Lucia, the wife of his choice, was the 
 eldest daughter of Altobello Bandarini, who had, 
 besides her, three daughters and four sons. Jerome, as 
 it has been already noted, was possessed with a fear lest 
 he should be burdened by his brothers- and sisters-in- 
 law after his marriage ; but, considering that he was a 
 young unknown physician, without either money or 
 patients, and that Bandarini was a man of position and 
 repute, with some wealth and more shrewdness, the 
 chances were that the burden would lie on the other 
 side. Cardan seems to have inherited Fazio's contempt 
 for wealth, or at least to have made a profession thereof; 
 for, in chronicling the event of his marriage, he sets 
 down, with a certain degree of pomposity, that he took 
 a wife without a dower on account of a certain vow he 
 had sworn. 2 If the bride was penniless the father-in-law 
 was wealthy, and the last-named fact might well have 
 proved a powerful argument to induce Cardan to remain 
 at Sacco, albeit he had little scope for his calling. That 
 he soon determined to quit the place, is an evidence 
 of his independence of spirit, and of his disinclination 
 to sponge upon his well-to-do connections. Bandarini, 
 when this scheme was proposed to him, vetoed it at 
 once. He was unwilling to part with his daughter, and 
 possibly he may have taken a fancy to his son-in-law, 
 for Cardan has left it on record that Bandarini was 
 greatly pleased with the match ; he ended, however, by 
 consenting to the migration, which was not made 
 without the intervention of a warning portent. A short 
 time before the young couple departed, it happened 
 that a tile got mixed with the embers in Bandarini's 
 bed-chamber ; and, in the course of the night, exploded 
 1 De Vita Propria, ch. xli. p. 149. 2 De Utilitate, p. 350. 
 
3 8 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 with a loud report, and the fragments thereof were 
 scattered around. This event Bandarini regarded as an 
 augury of evil, and indeed evil followed swiftly after. 
 Before a year had passed he was dead, some holding 
 that his death had been hastened by the ill conduct 
 of his eldest son, and others whispering suspicions 
 of poison. 
 
 Jerome and his young wife betook themselves to 
 Milan, but this visit seems to have been fully as 
 unprofitable as the one he had paid in 1529. In that 
 year he had to face his first rejection by the College of 
 Physicians, when he made application for admission ; 
 and there is indirect evidence that he now made a second 
 application with no better result. 1 In any case his 
 affairs were in a very bad way. If he had money in his 
 N pocket he would not keep long away from the gaming- 
 table ; and, with the weight of trouble ever bearing him 
 down more and more heavily, it is almost certain that 
 his spirits must have suffered, and that poor Lucia must 
 have passed many an unhappy hour on account of his 
 nervous irritability. Then the gates of his profession 
 remained closed to him by the action of the College. 
 .The pretext the authorities gave for their refusal to 
 admit him was his illegitimate birth ; but it is not 
 unlikely that they may have mistrusted as a colleague 
 the son of Fazio Cardano, and that stories of the profli- 
 gate life and the intractable temper of the candidate 
 may have been brought to them. 2 His health suffered 
 
 1 De Utilitate, p. 357 : " Nam in urbe nee collegium recipere 
 volebat nee cum aliquo ex illis artem exercere licebat et sine illis 
 difncillimum erat." Rewrites thus while describing this particular 
 visit to Milan. 
 
 2 111 fortune seems to have pursued the whole family in their 
 relations with learned societies. "Nam et pater meus ut ab eo 
 accepi, diu in ingressu Collegii Jurisconsultorum laboravit, et 
 
JEROME CARDAN 39 
 
 from the bad air of the city almost as severely as 
 before, and Lucia, who was at this time pregnant, mis- 
 carried at four months, and shortly afterwards had a 
 second misfortune of the same kind. His mother's 
 temper was not of the sweetest, and it is quite possible 
 that between her and her daughter-in-law there may 
 have been strained relations. Cardan at any rate found 
 that he must once more beat a retreat from Milan, 
 wherefore, at the end of April 1533, he made up his 
 mind to remove to Gallarate. 
 
 This town has already been mentioned as chief place 
 of the district, from which the Cardan family took its 
 origin. Before going thither Jerome had evidently 
 weighed the matter well, and he has set down at some 
 length the reasons which led him to make this choice. 
 " Thus, acting under the reasons aforesaid (the family 
 associations), I resolved to go to Gallarate, in order that 
 I might have the enjoyment of four separate advantages 
 which it offered. Firstly, that in the most healthy air 
 of the place I might shake off entirely the distemper 
 which I had contracted in Milan. Secondly, that I 
 might earn something by my profession, seeing that 
 then I should be free to practise. Thirdly, that there 
 would be no need for me to pine away while I beheld 
 those physicians, by whom I reckoned I had been 
 despoiled, flourishing in wealth and in the high esti- 
 mation of all men. Lastly, that by following a more 
 frugal way of life, I might make what I possessed last 
 the longer. For all things are cheaper in the country, 
 since they have to be carried from the country into the 
 town, and many necessaries may be had for the asking. 
 
 ego, ut alias testatus sum, bis a medicorum Patavino, toties filius 
 meus natu major, a Ticinensi, uterque a Mediolanensi rejecti 
 sumus." Opera, torn. i. p. 94. 
 
40 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 Persuaded by these arguments, I went to this place, and 
 I was not altogether deceived, seeing that I recovered 
 my health, and the son who was to be reft from me 
 later on by the Senate was born to me." l 
 
 Employment at Gallarate was, however, almost as 
 scarce as it had been at Sacco, wherefore Jerome found 
 leisure in plenty for literary work. He began a treatise 
 on Fate ; but, even had this been completed, it would 
 scarcely have filled the empty larder by the proceeds of 
 its sale. More profitable was some chance employment 
 which was given to him by Filippo Archinto, 2 a generous 
 and accomplished young nobleman of Milan, who was 
 ambitious to figure as a writer on Astronomy, and, it 
 may be remarked, Archinto's benefactions were not 
 confined to the payment for the hack work which 
 Jerome did for him at this period. Had it not been for 
 his subsequent patronage and support, it is quite possible 
 that Cardan would have gone under in the sea of 
 adversity. 
 
 In spite of the cheapness of provisions at Gallarate, 
 and of occasional meals taken gratis from the fields, 
 complete destitution seemed to be only -a-ffiatter of 
 days, and just at this crisis, to add to his embarrass- 
 ments though he longed earnestly for the event 
 Lucia was brought to bed with her first-born living 
 child on May 14, 1534. The child's birth was accom- 
 panied by divers omens, one of which the father 
 describes, finding therein some premonition of future 
 disaster. " I had great fear of his life until the fifteenth 
 day of June, on which day, being a Sunday, he was 
 
 1 De Utilitate, p. 358. 
 
 2 He became a priest, and died Archbishop of Milan in 1552. 
 Cardan dedicated to him his first published book, De Malo 
 Medendi. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 41 
 
 baptized. The sun shone brightly into the bed-chamber : 
 it was between the hours of eleven and twelve in the 
 forenoon ; and, according to custom, we were all 
 gathered round the mother's bed except a young 
 servant, the curtain was drawn away from the window 
 and fastened to the wall, when suddenly a large wasp 
 flew into the room, and circled round the infant. We 
 were all greatly afeard for the child, but the wasp did 
 him no hurt. The next moment it came against the 
 curtain, making so great a noise that you would have 
 said that a drum was being beaten, and all ran towards 
 the place, but found no trace of the wasp. It could not 
 have flown out of the room, because all eyes had been 
 fixed upon it. Then all of us who were then present 
 felt some foreboding of what subsequently came to pass, 
 but did not deem that the end would be so bitter as it 
 proved to be." l 
 
 The impulse which drives men in desperate straits to 
 seek shelter in the streets of a city was as strong in 
 Cardan's time as it is to-day. At Gallarate the last 
 coin was now spent, and there was an extra mouth to 
 feed. There seemed to be no other course open but 
 another retreat to Milan. Archinto was rich in literary 
 ambitions, which might perchance stimulate him to 
 find farther work for the starving scholar : and there 
 was Chiara also who would scarcely let her grandchild 
 die of want. The revelation which Cardan makes of 
 himself and of his way of life at this time is not one to 
 enlist sympathy for him entirely ; but it is not wanting 
 in a note of pathetic sincerity. " For a long time the 
 College at Milan refused to admit me, and during these 
 days I was assuredly a spendthrift and heedless. In 
 body I was weakly, and in estate plundered by thieves 
 1 De Vita Propria, ch. xxxvii. p. 119. 
 
42 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 on all sides, yet I never grudged money for the buying 
 of books. My residence at Gallarate brought me no 
 profit, for in the whole nineteen months I lived there, I 
 did not receive more than twenty-five crowns towards 
 the rent of the house I hired. I had such ill luck with 
 the dice that I was forced to pawn all my wife's jewels, 
 and our very bed. If it is a wonder that I found 
 myself thus bereft of all my substance, it is still more 
 wonderful that I did not take to begging on account of 
 my poverty, and a wonder greater still that I harboured in 
 my mind no unworthy thoughts against my forefathers, 
 or against right living, or against those honours which I 
 had won honours which afterwards stood me in good 
 stead but bore my misfortunes with mind undisturbed." l 
 Cardan's worldly fortunes were now at their lowest 
 ebb. Burdened with a wife and child, he had found it 
 necessary to return, after a second futile attempt to gain 
 a living by his calling in a country town, to Milan, his 
 " stony-hearted step-mother." If he had reckoned on 
 his mother's bounty he was doomed to disappointment, 
 for Chiara was an irritable woman, and as her son's 
 temper was none of the sweetest, it is almost certain 
 that they must have quarrelled occasionally. It is hard 
 to believe that they could have been on good terms at 
 this juncture, otherwise she would scarcely have allowed 
 him to take his wife and child to what was then the 
 public workhouse of the city ; 2 but this place was his 
 only refuge, and in October 1 5 34 he was glad to shelter 
 himself beneath its roof. 
 
 1 De Vita Propria, ch. xxv. p. 67. 
 
 2 The Xenodochium, which was originally a stranger's lodging- 
 house. By this time places of this sort had become little else than 
 succur -sales of some religious house. The Governors of the Milanese 
 Xenodochium were the patrons of the Plat endowment which 
 Cardan afterwards enjoyed. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 43 
 
 There was in Cardan's nature a strong vein of 
 melancholy, and up to the date now under consideration 
 he had been the victim of a fortune calculated to deepen 
 rather than disperse his morbid tendencies. A proof of 
 his high courage and dauntless perseverance may be 
 deduced from the fact that neither poverty, nor the 
 sense of repeated failure, nor the flouts of the Milanese 
 doctors, prevailed at any time to quench in his heart 
 the love of fame, 1 or to disabuse him of the conviction 
 that he, poverty-stricken wretch as he was, would before 
 long bind Fortune to his chariot-wheels, and would force 
 the adverse world to acknowledge him as one of its 
 master minds. The dawn was now not far distant, but 
 the last hours of his night of misfortune were very dark. 
 The worst of the struggle, as far as the world was 
 concerned, was over, and the sharpest sorrows and the 
 heaviest disgrace reserved for Cardan in the future were 
 to be those nourished in his own household. 
 
 Writing of his way of life and of the vices and defects 
 of his character, he says : "If a man shall fail in his 
 carriage before the world as he fails in other things, who 
 shall correct him ? Thus I myself will do duty for that 
 one leper who alone out of the ten who were healed 
 came back to our Lord. By reasoning of this sort, 
 Physicians and Astrologers trace back the origin of our 
 natural habits to our primal qualities, to the training of 
 our will, and to our occupations and conversation. In 
 every man all these are found in proper ratio to the 
 time of life of each individual ; nevertheless it will be 
 easy to discern marked variations in cases otherwise 
 similar. Therefore it behoves us to hold fast to some 
 guiding principle chosen out of these, and I on my part 
 
 1 " Hoc unum sat scio, ab ineunte aetate me inextinguibili 
 nominis immortalis cupiditate flagrasse." Opera, torn. i. p. 6u 
 
44 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 am inclined, as far as it may be allowed, to say with 
 respect to all of them, yvG>6i a-tavrbv. 
 
 " My own nature in sooth was never a mystery to 
 myself. I was ever hot-tempered, single-minded, and 
 given to women. From these cardinal tendencies there 
 proceeded truculence of temper, wrangling, obstinacy, 
 rudeness of carriage, anger, and an inordinate desire, or 
 rather a headstrong passion, for revenge in respect to 
 any wrong done to me ; so that this inclination, which 
 is censured by many, became to me a delight. To put 
 it briefly, I held A t vindicta bonum vita jucundius ipsa. 
 As a general rule I went astray but seldom, though it is 
 a common saying, * Natura nostra prona est ad malum.' 
 I am moreover truthful, mindful of benefits wrought to 
 me, a lover of justice and of my own people, a despiser 
 of money, a worshipper of that fame which defies death, 
 prone to thrust aside what is commonplace, and still 
 more disposed to treat mere trifles in the same way. 
 Still, knowing well how great may be the power of little 
 things at any moment during the course of an under- 
 taking, I never make light of aught which may be use- 
 ful. By nature I am prone to every vice and ill-doing 
 except ambition, and I, if no one else does, know my 
 own imperfections. But because of my veneration for 
 God, and because I recognize the vanity and emptiness 
 of all things of this sort, it often happens that, of my 
 own free will, I forego certain opportunities for taking 
 revenge which may be offered to me. I am timid, with 
 a cold heart and a hot brain, given to reflection and the 
 consideration of things many and mighty, and even of 
 things which can never come to pass. I can even let my 
 thoughts concern themselves with two distinct subjects 
 at the same time. Those who throw out charges of 
 garrulity and extravagance by way of contradicting any 
 
JEROME CARDAN 45 
 
 praise accorded to me, charge me with the faults of 
 others rather than my own. I attack no man, I only 
 defend myself. 
 
 "And what reason is there why I should spend myself 
 in this cause since I have so often borne witness of the 
 emptiness of this life of ours ? My excuse must be that 
 certain men have praised me, wherefore they cannot deem 
 me altogether wicked. I have always trained myself to 
 let my face contradict my thoughts. Thus while I can 
 simulate what is not, I cannot dissimulate what is. To 
 accomplish this is no difficult task if a man cultivates 
 likewise the habit of hoping for nothing. By striving for 
 fifteen years to compass this end and by spending much 
 trouble over the same I at last succeeded. Urged on by 
 this humour I sometimes go forth in rags, sometimes 
 finely dressed, sometimes silent, sometimes talkative, 
 sometimes joyful, sometimes sad ; and on this account 
 my two-fold mood shows everything double. In my 
 youth I rarely spent any care in keeping my hair in order, 
 because of my inclination for other pursuits more to my 
 taste. My gait is irregular. I move now quickly, now 
 slowly. When I am at home I go with my legs naked 
 as far as the ankles. I am slack in duty and reckless in 
 speech, and specially prone to show irritation over any- 
 thing which may disgust or irk me." 
 
 The above-written self-description does not display a 
 personality particularly attractive. Jerome Cardan was 
 one of those men who experience a morbid gratifica- 
 tion in cataloguing all their sinister points of character, 
 and exaggerating them at the same time ; and in this 
 picture, as in many others scattered about the De Vita 
 Propria, the shadows may have been put in too 
 strongly. 
 
 In the foregoing pages reference was made to certain 
 
46 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 acts of benevolence done to Cardan by the family of 
 Archinto. * It is not impossible that the promises and 
 persuasions of his young patron Filippo may have had 
 some weight in inducing Jerome to shift his home once 
 more. Whatever befell he could hardly make his case 
 worse ; but whether Filippo had promised help or not, 
 he showed himself now a true and valuable friend. 
 There was in Milan a public lectureship in geometry 
 and astronomy supported by a small endowment left by 
 a certain Tommaso Plat, and to this post, which hap- 
 pened opportunely to be vacant, Cardan was appointed 
 by the good offices of Filippo Archinto. Yet even when 
 he was literally a pauper he seems to have felt some 
 scruples about accepting this office, but fortunately 
 in this instance his poverty overcame his pride. The 
 salary was indeed a very small one, 1 and the lecturer 
 was not suffered to handle the whole of it, but it was at 
 least liberal enough to banish the dread of starvation, 
 and his duties, which consisted solely in the preparation 
 and delivery of his lectures, did not debar him from 
 literary work on his own account. Wherefore in his 
 leisure time he worked hard at his desk. 
 
 Any differences which may have existed between 
 him and his mother were now removed, for he took her 
 to live with him, the household being made up of him- 
 self, his wife, his mother, a friend (a woman), a nurse, 
 the little boy, a man- and maidservant, and a mule. 2 
 Possibly Chiara brought her own income with her, and 
 thus allowed the establishment to be conducted on a 
 more liberal scale. The Plat lectureship would scarcely 
 
 1 " Minimo tamen honorario, et illud etiam minimum suasu cujus- 
 dam amici egregii praefecti Xenodochii imminuerunt ; ita cum 
 hujus recorder in mentem venit fabellae illius Apuleii de annonae 
 Praefecto." Opera, torn. i. p. 64. 
 
 2 De Utilitate, p. 351. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 47 
 
 have maintained three servants, and Jerome's gains from 
 other sources must have been as yet very slender. His 
 life at this time was a busy one, but he always contrived 
 to portion out his days in such wise that certain hours 
 were left for recreation. At such times as he was called 
 upon to teach, the class-room, of course, had the first 
 claims. After the lecture he would walk in the shade 
 outside the city walls, then return to his dinner, then 
 divert himself with music, and afterwards go fishing in 
 the pools and streams hard by the town. In the course 
 of time he obtained other employment, being ap- 
 pointed physician to the Augustinian friars. The Prior 
 of this Order, Francesco Gaddi, was indeed his first 
 patient of note. He tells how he cured this man of a 
 biennial leprosy after treating him for six months ; 1 
 adding that his labour was in vain, inasmuch as Gaddi 
 died a violent death afterwards. The refusal of the 
 College of Milan to admit him to membership did not 
 forbid him to prescribe for whatever patients might like 
 to consult him by virtue of his Paduan degree. He read 
 voraciously everything which came in his way, and it 
 must have been during these years that he stored his 
 memory with that vast collection of facts out of which 
 he subsequently compounded the row of tomes which 
 form his legacy to posterity. Filippo Archinto was 
 unfailing in his kindness, and Jerome at this time was 
 fortunate enough to attract the attention of certain other 
 Milanese citizens of repute who afterwards proved to be 
 valuable friends ; Ludovico Madio, Girolamo Guerrini a 
 jeweller, Francesco Belloti, and Francesco della Croce. 
 The last-named was a skilled jurisconsult, whose help 
 
 1 The following gives a hint as to the treatment followed : 
 " Referant leprosos balneo ejus aquae in qua cadaver ablutum sit, 
 sanari." De Varietate, p. 334. 
 
48 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 proved of great service in a subsequent litigation between 
 Jerome and the College of Physicians. 
 
 All his life long Cardan was a dreamer of dreams, and 
 he gives an account of one of his visions in this year, 
 1534, which, whether regarded as an allegory or as a 
 portent, is somewhat remarkable. " In the year 1534, 
 when I was as it were groping in the dark, when I had 
 settled naught as to my future life, and when my case 
 seemed to grow more desperate day by day, I beheld 
 in a dream the figure of myself running towards the 
 base of a mountain which stood upon my right hand, 
 in company with a vast crowd of people of every station 
 and age and sex women, men, old men, boys, infants, 
 poor men and rich men, clad in raiment of every sort. I 
 inquired whither we were all running, whereupon one 
 of the multitude answered that we were all hastening 
 on to death. I was greatly terrified at these words, 
 when I perceived a mountain on my left hand. Then, 
 having turned myself round so that it stood on my right 
 side, I grasped the vines (which, here in the midst of 
 the mountains and as far as the place wherein I stood, 
 were covered with dry leaves, and bare of grapes, as we 
 commonly see them in autumn) and began to ascend. 
 At first I found this difficult, for the reason that the 
 mountain was very steep round the base, but having 
 surmounted this I made my way upward easily. When 
 I had come to the summit it seemed that I was like to 
 pass beyond the dictates of my own will. Steep naked 
 rocks appeared on every side, and I narrowly escaped 
 falling down from a great height into a gloomy chasm. 
 So dreadful is all this that now, what though forty years 
 have rolled away, the memory thereof still saddens and 
 terrifies me. Then, having turned towards the right 
 where I could see naught but a plain covered with 
 
JEROME CARDAN 49 
 
 heath, I took that path out of fear, and, as I wended 
 thither in reckless mood, I found that I had come to 
 the entrance of a rude hut, thatched with straw and 
 reeds and rushes, and that I held by my right hand a 
 boy about twelve years of age and clad in a grey garment. 
 Then at this very moment I was aroused from sleep, and 
 my dream vanished. 
 
 " In this vision was clearly displayed the deathless 
 name which was to be mine, my life of heavy and cease- 
 less work, my imprisonment, my seasons of grievous 
 terror and sadness, and my abiding-place foreshadowed 
 as inhospitable, by the sharp stones I beheld : barren, 
 by the want of trees and of all serviceable plants ; but 
 destined to be, nevertheless, in the end happy, and 
 righteous, and easy. This dream told also of my lasting 
 fame in the future, seeing that the vine yields a harvest 
 every year. As to the boy, if he were indeed my good 
 spirit, the omen was lucky, for I held him very close. 
 If he were meant to foreshadow my grandson it would 
 be less fortunate. That cottage in the desert was my 
 hope of rest. That overwhelming horror and the sense 
 of falling headlong may have had reference to the ruin 
 of my son. 1 
 
 " My second dream occurred a short time after. It 
 seemed to me that my soul was in the heaven of the 
 moon, freed from the body and all alone, and when I 
 was bewailing my fate I heard the voice of my father, 
 saying : ' God has appointed me as a guardian to you. 
 All this region is full of spirits, but these you cannot 
 see, and you must not speak either to me or to them. 
 In this part of heaven you will remain for seven thousand 
 years, and for the same time in certain other stars, until 
 
 1 De Vita Propria^ ch. xxxvii. p. 121. This dream is also told in 
 De Libris Propriis^ Opera, torn. i. p. 64. 
 
 E 
 
So JEROME CARDAN 
 
 you come to the eighth. After this you shall enter the 
 kingdom of God.' I read this dream as follows. My 
 father's soul is my tutelary spirit. What could be dearer 
 or more delightful? The Moon signifies Grammar; 
 Mercury Geometry and Arithmetic; Venus Music, the 
 Art of Divination, and Poetry ; the Sun the Moral, and 
 Jupiter the Natural, World; Mars Medicine; Saturn Agri- 
 culture, the knowledge of plants, and other minor arts. 
 The eighth star stands for a gleaning of all mundane 
 things, natural science, and various other studies. After 
 dealing with these I shall at last find my rest with the 
 Prince of Heaven." 1 
 
 1 De Vita Propria, ch. xxxvii. p. 121. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 JEROME CARDAN is now standing on the brink of 
 authorship. The very title of his first book, De Malo 
 Recentiorum Medicorum Medendi Usu, gives plain indi- 
 cation of the humour which possessed him, when he 
 formulated his subject and put it in writing. With 
 his temper vexed by the persistent neglect and insult 
 cast upon him by the Milanese doctors he would 
 naturally sit down con amore to compile a list of the 
 errors perpetrated by the ignorance and bungling of 
 the men who affected to despise him, and if his object 
 was to sting the hides of these pundits and arouse them 
 to hostility yet more vehement, he succeeded marvel- 
 lously well. He was enabled to launch his book rather 
 by the strength of private friendship than by the hope 
 of any commercial success. Whilst at Pavia he had 
 become intimate with Ottaviano Scoto, a fellow-student 
 who came from Venice, and in after times he found 
 Ottaviano's purse very useful to his needs. Since their 
 college days Ottaviano's father had died and had left 
 his son to carry on his calling of printing. In 1536 Jerome 
 bethought him of his friend, and sent him the MS. of 
 the treatise which was to let the world learn with what 
 little wisdom it was being doctored. 1 
 
 Ottaviano seems to have expected no profit from this 
 
 1 De Libris Propriis, Opera, torn. i. p. 102. 
 
52 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 venture, which was manifestly undertaken out of a 
 genuine desire to help his friend, and he generously 
 bore all the costs. Cardan deemed that, whatever 
 the result of the issue of the book might be, it would 
 surely be to his benefit ; he hazarded nothing, and the 
 very publication of his work would give him at least 
 notoriety. It would moreover give him the intense 
 pleasure of knowing that he was repaying in some 
 measure the debt of vengeance owing to his professional 
 foes. The outcome was exactly the opposite of what 
 printer and author had feared and hoped. The success 
 of the book was rapid and great. 
 
 Ottaviano must soon have recouped all the cost of 
 publication ; and, while he was counting his money, the 
 doctors everywhere were reading Jerome's brochure, 
 and preparing a ruthless attack upon the daring censor, 
 who, with the impetuosity of youth, had laid himself 
 open to attack by the careless fashion in which he had 
 compiled his work. He took fifteen days to write it, 
 and he confesses in his preface to the revised edition 
 that he found therein over three hundred mistakes of 
 one sort or another. The attack was naturally led by 
 the Milanese doctors. They demanded to be told why 
 this man, who was not good enough to practise by their 
 sanction, was good enough to lay down the laws for the 
 residue of the medical world. They heaped blunder 
 upon blunder, and held him up to ridicule with all the 
 wealth of invective characteristic of the learned con- 
 troversy of the age. Cardan was deeply humbled and 
 annoyed. " For my opponents, seizing the opportunity, 
 took occasion to assail me through the reasoning of this 
 book, and cried out : ' Who can doubt that this man is 
 mad ? and that he would teach a method and a practice 
 of medicine differing from our own, since he has so many 
 
JEROME CARDAN 53 
 
 hard things to say of our procedure.' And, as Galen 
 said, I roust in truth have appeared crazy in my efforts 
 to contradict this multitude raging against me. For, as 
 it was absolutely certain that either I or they must be 
 in the wrong, how could I hope to win ? Who would 
 take my word against the word of this band of doctors 
 of approved standing, wealthy, for the most part full 
 of years, well instructed, richly clad and cultivated 
 in their bearing, well versed in speaking, supported 
 by crowds of friends and kinsfolk, raised by popular 
 approval to high position, and, what was more power- 
 ful than all else, skilled in every art of cunning and 
 deceit?" 
 
 Cardan had indeed prepared a bitter pill for his foes, 
 but the draught they compelled him to swallow was 
 hardly more palatable. The publication of the book 
 naturally increased the difficulties of his position, and 
 in this respect tended to make his final triumph all the 
 more noteworthy. 
 
 It was in 1536 that Cardan made his first essay as an 
 author. 1 The next three years of his life at Milan were 
 remarkable as years of preparation and accumulation, 
 rather than as years of achievement. He had struck 
 his first blow as a reformer, and, as is often the lot of 
 reformers, his sword had broken in his hand, and there 
 now rested upon him the sense of failure as a superadded 
 torment. Yet now and again a gleam of consolation 
 would disperse the gloom, and advise him that the world 
 was beginning to recognize his existence, and in a way 
 his merits. In this same year he received an offer from 
 Pavia of the Professorship of Medicine, but this he re- 
 
 1 Besides the De Malo Medendi LTsu, he published in 1536 a 
 tract upon judicial astrology. This, in an enlarged form, was 
 reprinted by Petreius at Nuremburg in 1542. 
 
54 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 \ fused because he did not see any prospect of being paid 
 I for his services. His friend Filippo Archinto was loyal 
 still, and zealous in working for his success, and as he 
 had been recently promoted to high office in the Imperial 
 service, his good word might be very valuable indeed. 
 He summoned his protege to join him at Piacenza, 
 whither he had gone to meet Paul III., hoping to advance 
 Cardan's interests with the Pope ; but though Marshal 
 Brissac, the French king's representative, 1 joined Archinto 
 in advocating his cause, nothing was done, and Jerome 
 returned disappointed to Milan. 
 
 In these months Cardan, disgusted by the failure of 
 his late attack upon the fortress of medical authority, 
 turned his back, for a time, upon the study of medicine, 
 and gave his attention almost entirely to mathematics, in 
 which his reputation was high enough to attract pupils, 
 and he always had one or more of them in his house, the 
 most noteworthy of whom was Ludovico Ferrari of Bo- 
 logna, who became afterwards a mathematician of repute, 
 and a teacher both at Milan and Bologna. While he 
 was working at the De Malo Medendi, he began a treatise 
 upon Arithmetic, which he dedicated to his friend Prior 
 Gaddi ; but this work was not published till 1539. In 
 1536 he first heard a report of a fresh and important 
 discovery in algebra, made by one Scipio Ferreo of 
 Bologna ; the prologue to one of the most dramatic 
 incidents in his career, an incident which it will be 
 necessary to treat at some length later on. 
 
 Cardan was well aware that his excursions into 
 astrology worked to his prejudice in public esteem, 
 but in spite of this he could not refrain therefrom. It 
 was during the plentiful leisure of this period that he 
 
 1 Cardan writes of Brissac : "Erat enim Brissacus Prorex singularis 
 in studiosis amoris et humanitatis." De Vita Propria^ ch. iv. p. 14. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 55 
 
 cast the horoscope of Jesus Christ, a feat which sub- 
 sequently brought upon him grave misfortune; a few 
 patients came to him, moved no doubt by the spirit 
 which still prompts people suffering from obscure 
 diseases to consult professors of healing who are 
 either in revolt or unqualified in preference to going 
 to the orthodox physician. In connection with this 
 irregular practice of his he gives a curious story 
 about a certain Count Borromeo. "In 1536, while I was 
 attending professionally in the house of the Borromei, it 
 chanced that just about dawn I had a dream in which I 
 beheld a serpent of enormous bulk, and I was seized 
 with fear lest I should meet my death therefrom. Shortly 
 afterwards there came a messenger to summon me to 
 see the son of Count Carlo Borromeo. I went to the 
 boy, who was about seven years old, and found him 
 suffering from a slight distemper, but on feeling his 
 pulse I perceived that it failed at every fourth beat. 
 His mother, the Countess Corona, asked me how he 
 fared, and I answered that there was not much fever 
 about him ; but that, because his pulse failed at every 
 fourth beat, I was in fear of something, but what it 
 might be I knew not rightly (but I had not then by me 
 Galen's books on the indications of the pulse). There- 
 fore, as the patient's state changed not, I determined on 
 the third day to give him in small doses the drug called 
 Diarob : cum Turbit : I had already written my pre- 
 scription, and the messenger was just starting with it to 
 the pharmacy, when I remembered my dream. ' How 
 do I know/ said I to myself, 'that this boy may not be 
 about to die as prefigured by the portent above written ? 
 and in that case these other physicians who hate me so 
 bitterly, will maintain he died through taking this drug.' 
 I called to the messenger, and said there was wanting in 
 
56 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 the prescription something which I desired to add. Then 
 I privately tore up what I had written, and wrote out 
 another made of pearls, of the horn of unicorn, 1 and 
 certain gems. The powder was given, and was followed 
 by vomiting. The bystanders perceived that the boy 
 was indeed sick, whereupon they called in three of the 
 chief physicians, one of whom was in a way friendly to 
 me. They saw the description of the medicine, and 
 demanded what I would do now. Now although two of 
 these men hated me, it was not God's will that I should 
 be farther attacked, and they not only praised the 
 medicine, but. ordered that it should be repeated. This 
 was the saving of me. When I went again in the even- 
 ing I understood the case completely. The following 
 morning I was summoned at daybreak, and found the 
 boy battling with death, and his father lying in tears. 
 * Behold him/ he cried, ' the boy whom you declared to 
 ail nothing' (as if indeed I could have said such a thing); 
 ' at least you will remain with him as long as he lives/ 
 I promised that I would, and a little later the boy tried 
 to rise, crying out the while. They held him down, and 
 cast all the blame upon me. What more is there to say? 
 If there had been found any trace of that drug Diarob : 
 cum Turbit : (which in sooth was not safe) it would have 
 been all over with me, since Borromeo all his life would 
 either have launched against me complaints grave enough 
 to make all men shun me, or another Canidia, more fatal 
 than African serpents, would have breathed poison upon 
 me." 2 
 
 1 "Mirumque in modum venenis cornu ejus adversari creditur." 
 De Subtilitate^ p. 315. Sir Thomas Browne {Vulgar Errors, 
 Bk. iii. 23) deals at length with the pretended virtues of the horn, 
 and in the Bestiary of Philip de Thaun (Popular Treatises on Science 
 during the Middle Ages) is given an account of the many wonderful 
 qualities of the beast. 
 
 2 De Vita Propria, ch. xxxiii. p. 105. He also alludes to this case 
 
JEROME CARDAN 57 
 
 In this same year, 1536, Lucia brought forth another 
 child, a daughter, and it was about this time that Cardan 
 first attracted the attention of Alfonso d'Avalos, the 
 Governor of Milan, and an intimacy began which, albeit 
 fruitless at first, was destined to be of no slight service to 
 Jerome at the crisis of his fortunes. 1 In the following 
 year, in 1537, he made a beginning of two of his books, 
 which were subsequently found worthy of being finished, 
 and which may still be read with a certain interest : the 
 treatises De Sapientia and De Consolatione. Of the last- 
 named, he remarks that it pleased no one, forasmuch as it 
 appealed not to those who were happy, and the wretched 
 rejected it as entirely inadequate to give them solace in 
 their evil case. In this year he made another attempt to 
 
 in De Libris Propriis (Opera, torn. i. p. 65), affirming that the other 
 doctors concerned in the case raised a great prejudice against him 
 on account of his reputation as an astrologer. " Ita tot modis et 
 insanus paupertate, et Astrologus profitendo edendoque libros, et 
 imperitus casu illustris pueri, et modum alium medendi observans 
 ex titulo libri nuper edito, jam prope ab omnibus habebar. Atque 
 hsec omnia in Urbe omnium nugacissima, et quae calumniis maxime 
 patet." 
 
 1 The founder of this family was Indico d'Avalos, a Spanish 
 gentleman, who was chosen by Alfonso of Naples as a husband for 
 Antonella, the daughter and heiress of the great Marchese Pescara 
 of Aquino. This d'Avalos Marchese dal Guasto was the grandson 
 of Indico. He commanded the advanced guard at the battle of 
 Pavia, and took part in almost every battle between the French and 
 Imperialists, and went with the Emperor to Tunis in 1535. Though 
 he was a brave soldier and a skilful tactician, he was utterly defeated 
 by d'Enghien at Cerisoles in 1 544. He has been taxed with treachery 
 in the case of the attack upon the messengers Rincon and Fregoso, 
 who were carrying letters from Francis I. to the Sultan during a 
 truce, but he did little more than imitate the tactics used by the 
 French against himself; moreover, neither of the murdered men 
 was a French subject, or had the status of an ambassador. 
 D'Avalos was a liberal patron of letters and arts, and was very 
 popular as Governor of Milan. He was a noted gallant and a 
 great dandy. Brantome writes of him "qu'il etait si dameret 
 qu'il parfumait jusqu'aux selles de ses chevaux." He died in 1546. 
 
58 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 gain admission to the College at Milan, and was again 
 rejected ; the issue of the De Malo Medendi was too 
 recent, and it needed other and more potent influences 
 than those exercised by mere merit, to appease the fury 
 of his rivals and to procure him due status. But it 
 would appear that, in 1536 or 1537, he negotiated with 
 the College to obtain a quasi-recognition on conditions 
 which he afterwards describes as disgraceful to himself, 
 and that this was granted to him. 1 
 
 Whatever his qualifications may have been, Cardan 
 had no scruples in treating the few patients who came 
 to him. The first case he notes is that of Donato 
 Lanza, 2 a druggist, who had suffered for many years 
 with blood-spitting, which ailment he treated success- 
 fully. Success of this sort was naturally helpful, but 
 far more important than Lanza's cure was the introduc- 
 tion given by the grateful patient to the physician, com- 
 mending him to Francesco Sfondrato, a noble Milanese, 
 a senator, and a member of the Emperor's privy council. 
 The eldest son of this gentleman had suffered many 
 months from convulsions, and Cardan worked a cure in 
 his case without difficulty. Shortly afterwards another 
 child, only ten months old, was attacked by the same 
 complaint, and was treated by Luca della Croce, 
 the procurator of the College of Physicians, of which 
 Sfondrato was a patron. As the attack threatened to 
 be a serious one, Delia Croce recommended that another 
 physician, Ambrogio Cavenago, should be called in, but 
 the father, remembering Cardan's cure of Lanza, wished 
 
 1 "Violentia quorundam Medicorum adactus sum anno 
 MDXXXVI, seu XXXVII, turpi conditione pacisci cum Collegio, 
 sed ut dixi, postmodum dissoluta est, anno MDXXXIX et restitutus 
 sum integre." De Vita Propria, ch. xxxiii. p. 105. 
 
 2 De Vita Propria, ch. xl. p. 133. He gives a long list of cases 
 of his successful treatment in Opera, torn, i. p. 82. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 59 
 
 for him as well. The description of the meeting of the 
 doctors round the sick child's bed, of their quotations 
 from Hippocrates, of the uncertainty and helplessness 
 of the orthodox practitioners, and of the ready resource 
 of the free-lance who happens also to be the teller of 
 the story is a richly typical one. 1 " We, the physicians 
 and the father of the child, met about seven in the 
 morning, and Delia Croce made a few general observa- 
 tions on death, for he knew that Sfondrato was a 
 sensible man, and he himself was both honoured and 
 learned. Cavenago kept silence at this stage, because 
 the last word had been granted to him. Then I said, 
 ' Do you not see that the child is suffering from Opis- 
 thotonos ? ' whereupon the first physician stood as one 
 dazed, as if I were trying to trouble his wits by my 
 hard words. But Delia Croce at once swept aside all 
 uncertainty by saying, ' He means the backward con- 
 traction of the muscles.' I confirmed his words, and 
 added, ' I will show you what I mean.' Whereupon I 
 raised the boy's head, which the doctors and all the 
 rest believed was hanging down through weakness, and 
 by its own weight, and bade them put it into its former 
 position. Then Sfondrato turned to me, and said, 'As 
 you have discovered what the disease is, tell us likewise 
 what is the remedy therefor.' Since no one else spoke, 
 I turned towards him and careful lest I should do hurt 
 to the credit I had gained already, I said, ' You know 
 what Hippocrates lays down in a case like this -febrem 
 convulsioni' and I recited the aphorism. Then I 
 ordered a fomentation, and an application of lint mois- 
 tened with linseed-oil and oil of lilies, and gave directions 
 that the child should be gently handled until such time 
 
 1 There is a full account of this episode in De Libris Propriis, 
 p. 128, and in De Vita Propria^ ch. xl. p. 133. 
 
60 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 as the neck should be restored ; that the nurse should 
 eat no meat, and that the child should be nourished 
 entirely by the milk of her breast, and not too much of 
 that ; that it should be kept in its cradle in a warm 
 place, and rocked gently till it should fall asleep. After 
 the other physicians had gone, I remember that the 
 father of the child said to me, ' I give you this child for 
 your own,' and that I answered, ' You are doing him an 
 ill turn, in that you are supplanting his rich father by a 
 poor one.' He answered, * I am sure that you would 
 care for him as if he were your own, fearing naught that 
 you might thereby give offence to these others ' (mean- 
 ing the physicians). I said, * It would please me well to 
 work with them in everything, and to win their support.' 
 I thus blended my words, so that he might understand 
 I neither despaired of the child's cure, nor was quite confi- 
 dent thereanent The cure came to a favourable end ; 
 for, after the fourteenth day of the fever the weather 
 being very warm the child got well in four days' time. 
 Now as I review the circumstances, I am of opinion that 
 it was not because I perceived what the disease really 
 was, for I might have done so much by reason of my 
 special practice ; nor because I healed the child, for that 
 might have been attributed to chance ; but because the 
 child got well in four days, whereas his brother lay ill 
 for six months, and was then left half dead, that his 
 father was so much amazed at my skill, and afterwards 
 preferred me to all others. That he thought well of me 
 is certain, because Delia Croce himself, during the time 
 of his procuratorship, was full of spite and jealousy 
 against me, and declared in the presence of Cavenago 
 and of Sfondrato, that he would not, under compulsion, 
 say a word in favour of a man like me, one whom the 
 College regarded with disfavour. Whereupon Sfon- 
 
JEROME CARDAN 61 
 
 drato saw that the envy and jealousy of the other 
 physicians was what kept me out of the College, and not 
 the circumstances of my birth. He told the whole 
 story to the Senate, and brought such influence to bear 
 upon the Governor of the Province and other men of 
 worship, that at last the entrance to the College was 
 opened to me." 
 
 / Up to the time of his admission to the College, 
 / Jerome had never felt that he could depend entirely 
 1 upon medicine for his livelihood. He now determined 
 I to publish his Practica Arithmetics ', the book which he 
 had prepared pari passu with the ill-starred De Malo 
 Medendi. It seems to have been thoroughly revised 
 and corrected, and was finally published in 1539, in 
 Milan ; Cardan only received ten crowns for his work, 
 but the sudden fame he achieved as a mathematician 
 ought to have set him on firm ground. His friends 
 were still working to secure for him benefits yet 
 more substantial. Alfonso d'Avalos, Francesco della 
 Croce, the jurisconsult whose name has already been 
 mentioned, and the senator Sfondrato, were doing their 
 best to bring the physicians of the city into a more 
 reasonable temper, and they finally succeeded in 1539 ; 
 when, after having been denied admission for twelve 
 years, Jerome Cardan became a member of the 
 College, and a sharer in all the privileges appertaining 
 thereto. 
 
 Though Cardan was now a fully qualified physician, 
 he spent his time for the next year or two rather with 
 letters than with medicine. He worked hard at Greek, 
 and as the result of his studies published somewhat , 
 prematurely a treatise, De Immortalitate Animorum, L. 
 a collection of extracts from Greek writers which Julius 
 Caesar Scaliger with justice calls a confused farrago 
 
62 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 of other men's learning. 1 He published also about this 
 period the treatise on Judicial Astrology, and the Essay 
 De Consolatione^ the only one of his books which has 
 been found worthy of an English translation. 2 In 
 1541 he became Rector of the College of Physicians, 
 but there is no record of any increase in the number 
 of his patients by reason of this superadded dignity. 
 A passage in the De Vita Propria^ written with even 
 more than his usual brutal candour, gives a graphic 
 view of his manner of life at this period. " It was in 
 the summer of the year 1543, a time when it was 
 my custom to go every day to the house of Antonio 
 Vicomercato, a gentleman of the city, and to play chess 
 with him from morning till night. As we were wont to 
 play for one real, or even three or four, on each game, I, 
 seeing that I was generally the winner, would as a rule 
 carry away with me a gold piece after each day's play, 
 sometimes more and sometimes Jess. In the case of 
 Vicomercato it was a pleasure and nothing else to spend 
 money in this wise ; but in my own there was an element 
 of conflict as well ; and in this manner I lost my self- 
 respect so completely that, for two years and more, I 
 took no thought of practising my art, nor considered 
 that I was wasting all my substance save what I made 
 by play that my good name and my studies as well 
 would suffer shipwreck. But on a certain day towards 
 the end of August, a new humour seized Vicomercato 
 (either advisedly on account of the constant loss he 
 suffered, or perhaps because he thought his decision would 
 be for my benefit), a determination from which he was 
 
 1 Exotericarum exercitationum, p. 987. 
 
 2 Cardanus Comforte, translated into Englishe^ 1573. It was the 
 work of Thomas Bedingfield, a gentleman pensioner of Queen 
 Elizabeth. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 63 
 
 to be moved neither by arguments, nor adjurations, nor 
 abuse. He forced me to swear that I would never 
 again visit his house for the sake of gaming, and I, on 
 my part, swore by all the gods as he wished. That 
 day's play was our last, and thenceforth I gave myself 
 up entirely to my studies." * 
 
 But these studies unfortunately were not of a nature 
 to keep the wolf from the door ; and Jerome, albeit now 
 a duly qualified physician, and known to fame as a writer 
 on Mathematics far beyond the bounds of Italy, was 
 well-nigh as poor as ever. His mother had died several 
 years before, in 1537; but what little money she may 
 have left would soon have been wasted in gratifying his 
 extravagant taste for costly things, 2 and at the gaming- 
 table. He found funds, however, for a journey to 
 Florence, whither he went to see d'Avalos, who was a 
 generous, open-handed man, and always ready to put 
 his purse at the service of one whom he regarded as an 
 honour to his city and country. There can be little 
 doubt that he helped Cardan liberally at this juncture. 
 The need for a loan was assuredly urgent enough. The 
 recent resumption of hostilities between the French and 
 the Imperialists had led to intolerable taxation through- 
 out the Milanese provinces, and in consequence of 
 dearth of funds in 1543, the Academy at Pavia was 
 forced to close its class-rooms, and leave its teachers 
 unpaid. The greater part of the professors migrated to 
 Pisa ; and the Faculty of Medicine, then vacant, was, 
 pro formd, transferred to Milan. This chair was now 
 offered to Cardan. He was in desperate straits a third 
 
 1 De Vita Propria, ch. xxxvii. p. 116. 
 
 2 " Delectant me gladii parvi, seu styli scriptorii, in quos plus 
 viginti coronatis aureis impend! : multas etiam pecunias in varia 
 pennarum genera, audeo dicere apparatum ad scribendum ducentis 
 coronatis non potuisse emi." De Vita Protiria, ch. xviii. p. 57. 
 
64 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 child had been born this year and, though there must 
 have been even less chance of getting his salary paid 
 than when he had refused it before, he accepted the 
 post, explaining that he took this step because there 
 was now no need for him to leave Milan, or danger that 
 he would be rated as an itinerant teacher. It is not 
 improbable that he may have been led to accept the 
 office on account of the additional dignity it would give 
 to him as a practising physician. When, a little later 
 on, the authorities began to talk of returning to Pavia, 
 he was in no mind to follow them, giving as a reason 
 that, were he to leave Milan, he would lose his stipend 
 for the Plat lectureship, and be put to great trouble in 
 the transport of his household, and perhaps suffer in. 
 reputation as well. The Senate was evidently anxious 
 to retain his services. They bade him consider the 
 matter, promising to send on a certain date to learn his 
 decision ; and, as fate would have it, the question 
 was conveniently decided for him by a portent. 
 
 " On the night before the day upon which my answer 
 was to be sent to the Senate to say what course I was 
 going to take, the whole of the house fell down into a 
 heap of ruins, and no single thing was left un wrecked, 
 save the bed in which I and my wife and my children 
 were sleeping. Thus the step, which I should never 
 have taken of my own free will or without some sign, I 
 was compelled to take by the course of events. This 
 thing caused great wonder to all those who heard 
 of it." l 
 
 This was in 1 544. Jerome hesitated no longer, and 
 
 went forthwith to Pavia as Professor of Medicine at 
 
 a salary of two hundred and forty gold crowns per 
 
 annum ; but, for the first year at least, this salary was 
 
 1 De Vita Propria, ch. iv. p. 15. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 65 
 
 not paid ; and the new professor lectured for a time to 
 empty benches ; but, as he was at this time engaged in 
 the final stage of his great work on Algebra, the leisure 
 granted to him by the neglect of the students must 
 have been most acceptable. He published at this time 
 a treatise called Contradicentium Medicorum, and in 
 1545 his Algebra or Liber Artis M agues was issued 
 from the press by Petreius of Nuremberg. The issue 
 of this book, by which alone the name of Cardan holds 
 a place in contemporary learning, is connected with an 
 episode of his life important enough to demand special 
 and detailed consideration in a separate place. 
 
 His practice in medicine was now a fairly lucrative 
 one, but his extravagant tastes and the many vices with 
 which he charges himself would have made short work 
 of the largest income he could possibly have earned, 
 consequently poverty was never far removed from the 
 household. Hitherto his reputation as a man of letters 
 and a mathematician had exceeded his fame as a doctor; 
 for, even after he had taken up his residence as Professor 
 of Medicine at Padua, many applications were made to 
 him for his services in other branches of learning. It 
 was fortunate indeed that he had let his reading take 
 a somewhat eclectic course, for medicine at this time 
 seemed fated to play him false. At the end of 1 544 no 
 salary was forthcoming at Pavia, so he abandoned his 
 class-room, and returned to Milan. 
 
 During his residence there, in the summer of 1546, 
 Cardinal Moroni, acting on behalf of Pope Paul III., 
 made an offer for his services as a teacher of mathe- 
 matics, accompanied by terms which, as he himself 
 admits, were not to be despised; but, as was his wont, 
 he found some reason for demur, and ultimately refused ] j \ 
 the offer. In his' Harpocratic vein he argued, "This 
 
66 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 pope is an old man, a tottering wall, as it were. Why 
 should I abandon a certainty for an uncertainty ? " 1 
 The certainty he here alludes to must have been the 
 salary for the Plat lectureship ; and, as this emolument 
 was a very small one, it would appear that he did not 
 rate at a high figure any profits which might come to 
 him in the future from his acceptance of the Pope's 
 offer ; but, as he admits subsequently, he did not then 
 fully realize the benevolence of the Cardinal who 
 approached him on the subject, or the magnificent 
 patronage of the Farnesi. 2 It is quite possible that this 
 refusal of his may have been caused by a reluctance to 
 quit Milan, the city which had treated him in such 
 cruel and inhospitable fashion, just at the time when he 
 had become a man of mark. In the arrogance of success 
 it was doubtless a keen pleasure to let his fellow-towns- 
 , ; \ men see that the man upon whom they had heaped 
 insult after insult for so many years was one who could 
 afford to let Popes and Cardinals pray for his services 
 I in vain. But whatever may have been his humour, he 
 resolved to remain in Milan ; and, as he had no other 
 public duty to perform except the delivery of the Plat 
 lectures, he had abundant leisure to spend upon the 
 many and important works he had on hand at this 
 season. 
 
 Cardan had now achieved European fame, and was 
 apparently on the high road to fortune, but on the 
 
 1 "At ego qui, ut dixi, Harpocraticus sum dicebam: Summus 
 Pont : decrepitus est : murus ruinosus, certa pro incertis derelin- 
 quam?" De Vita Propria, ch. iv. p. 15. It is quite possible that 
 Paul III. may have desired to have Cardan about him on account 
 of his reputation as an astrologer, the Pope being a firm believer 
 in the influence of the stars. Vide Ranke, History of the Popes 
 i. 166. 
 
 2 " Neque ego turn Moroni probitatem, nee Pharnesiorum 
 splendorem intelligebam." De Vita Propria, ch. iv. p. 15. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 67 
 
 very threshold of his triumph a great sorrow and 
 misfortune befell him, the full effect of which he did not 
 experience all at once. In the closing days of 1546 he 
 lost his wife. There is very scant record of her life and 
 character in any of her husband's writings, 1 although he 
 wrote at great length concerning her father ; and the 
 few words that are to be found here and there favour 
 the view that she was a good wife and mother. That 
 Jerome could have been an easy husband to live with 
 under any circumstances it is hard to believe. Lucia's 
 life, had it been prolonged, might have been more free 
 of trouble as the wife of a famous and wealthy 
 physician ; but it was her ill fortune to be the com- 
 panion of her husband only in those dreary, terrible 
 days at Sacco and Gallarate, and in the years of 
 uncertainty which followed the final return to Milan. 
 In the last-named period there was at least the Plat 
 lectureship standing between them and starvation ; but 
 children increased the while in the nursery, and manu- 
 scripts in the desk of the physician without patients, 
 and Lucia's short life was all consumed in this weary 
 time of waiting for fame and fortune which, albeit 
 hovering near, seemed destined to mock and delude the 
 seeker to the end. Cardan was before all else a man of 
 books and of the study, and it is not rare to find that 
 
 1 In writing of his own horoscope (Geniturarum Exempla, 
 p. 461) he records that she miscarried thrice, brought forth 
 three living children, and lived with him fifteen years. He dis- 
 misses his marriage as follows : " Duxi uxorem inexpectato, a 
 quo tempore multa adversa concomitata sunt." De Vita Propria, 
 ch. xli. p. 149. But in De Rerum Subtilitate, p. 375, he records 
 his grief at her death : " Itaque cum a luctu dolor et vigilia 
 invadere soleant, ut mihi anno vertente in morte uxoris Luciae 
 Bandarenas quanquam institutis philosophise munitus essem, re- 
 pugnante tamen natura, memorque vinculi cojugalis, suspiriis ac 
 lachrymis et inedia quinque dierum, a periculo me vindicavi." 
 
68 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 one of this sort makes a harsh unsympathetic husband. 
 The qualities which he attributes to himself in his 
 autobiography suggest that to live with a man cursed 
 with such a nature would have been difficult even in 
 prosperity, and intolerable in trouble and privation. 
 But fretful and irascible as Cardan shows himself to have 
 been, there was a warm-hearted, affectionate side to his 
 nature. He was capable of steadfast devotion to all 
 those to whom his love had ever been given. His 
 reverence for the memory of his tyrannical and irascible 
 father had been noted already, and a still more remark- 
 able instance of his fidelity and love will have to be 
 considered when the time comes to deal with the crown- 
 ing tragedy of his life. If Cardan had this tender side 
 to his nature, if he could speak tolerant and even lauda- 
 tory words concerning such a father as Fazio Cardano, 
 and show evidences of a love strong as death in the 
 fight he made for the life of his ill-starred and unworthy 
 son, it may be hoped in spite of his almost unnatural 
 silence concerning her that he gave Lucia some of that 
 tenderness and sympathy which her life of hard toil and 
 heavy sacrifice so richly deserved ; and that even in the 
 days when he sold her trinkets to pay his gambling 
 losses, she was not destined to weep the bitter tears of 
 a neglected wife. If her early married life had been full 
 of care and travail, if she died when a better day 
 seemed to be dawning, she was at least spared the 
 supreme sorrow and disgrace which was destined to fall 
 so soon upon the household. Judging by what subse- 
 quently happened, it will perhaps be held that fate, in 
 cutting her thread of life, was kinder to her than to 
 her husband, when it gave him a longer term of years 
 under the sun. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 AT this point it may not be inopportune to make a 
 break in the record of Cardan's life and work, and to 
 treat in retrospect of that portion of his time which he 
 spent in the composition of his treatises on Arithmetic 
 and Algebra. Ever since 1535 he had been working 
 intermittently at one or other of these, but it would 
 have been impossible to deal coherently and effectively 
 with the growth and completion of these two books 
 really the most important of all he left behind him 
 while chronicling the goings and comings of a life so 
 adventurous as that of the author. 
 
 The prime object of Cardan's ambition was eminence 
 as a physician. But, during the long years of waiting, 
 while the action of the Milanese doctors kept him out- 
 side the bounds of their College, and even after this had 
 been opened to him without inducing ailing mortals to 
 call for his services, he would now and again fall into 
 a transport of rage against his persecutors, and of con- 
 tempt for the public which refused to recognize him as ,^ 
 a master of his art, and cast aside his medical books for 
 months at a time, devoting himself diligently to Mathe- "") 
 matics, the field of learning which, next to Medicine 
 
 * 
 
 attracted him most powerfully. His father Fazio was 
 a geometrician of repute and a student of applied mathe- 
 matics, and, though his first desire was to make his son 
 
 69 
 
7 o JEROME CARDAN 
 
 a jurisconsult, he gave Jerome in early youth a fairly 
 gooql grounding in arithmetic and geometry, deeming 
 probably that such training would not prove a bad 
 discipline for an intellect destined to attack those for- 
 midable tomes within which lurked the mysteries of 
 the Canon and Civil Law. Mathematical learning has 
 given to Cardan his surest title to immortality, and 
 at the outset of his career he found in mathematics 
 rather than in medicine the first support in the arduous 
 battle he had to wage with fortune. His appointment 
 to the Plat lectureship at Milan has already been noted. 
 In the discharge of his new duties he was bound, accord- 
 ing to the terms of the endowment of the Plat lecturer, 
 to teach the sciences of geometry, arithmetic, and 
 astronomy, and he began his course upon the lines laid 
 down by the founder. Few listeners came, however, 
 and at this juncture Cardan took a step which serves 
 to show how real was his devotion to the cause of true 
 learning, and how lightly he thought of an additional 
 burden upon his own back, if this cause could be helped 
 forward thereby. Keenly as he enjoyed his mathe- 
 matical work, he laid a part of it aside when he perceived 
 that the benches before him were empty, and, by way 
 of making his lectures more attractive, he occasionally 
 } substituted geography for geometry, and architecture 
 for arithmetic. The necessary research and the pre- 
 paration of these lectures led naturally to the accumu- 
 lation of a large mass of notes, and as these increased 
 under his hand Jerome began to consider whether it 
 might not be worth his while to use them in the com- 
 position of one or more volumes. In 1535 he delivered 
 as Plat lecturer his address, the Encomium Geometric, 
 which he followed up shortly after by the publication 
 of a work, Quindecim Libri Novce Geometries. But 
 
JEROME CARDAN 71 
 
 the most profitable labour of these years was that 
 which produced his first important book, The Practice 
 of Arithmetic and Simple Mensuration, which was 
 published in 1539, a venture which brought to the 
 author a reward of ten crowns. 1 It was a well-planned 
 and well-arranged manual, giving proof of the wide 
 erudition and sense of proportion possessed by the 
 author. Besides dealing with Arithmetic as understood 
 by the modern school-boy, it discusses certain astrono- 
 mical operations, multiplication by memory, the mys- 
 teries of the Roman and Ecclesiastical Calendars, and 
 gives rules for the solution of any problem arising from 
 the terms of the same. It treats of partnership in 
 agriculture, the Mezzadria system still prevalent in 
 Tuscany and in other parts of Italy, of the value of 
 money, of the strange properties of certain numbers, 
 and gives the first simple rules of Algebra to serve as 
 stepping-stones to the higher mathematics. It ends 
 with information as to house-rent, letters of credit and 
 exchange, tables of interest, games of chance, mensura- 
 tion, and weights and measures. In an appendix Cardan \ 
 examines critically the work of Fra Luca Pacioli da Borgo, 
 an earlier writer on the subject, and points out numerous 
 errors in the same. The book from beginning to end 
 shows signs of careful study and compilation, and the 
 fame which it brought to its author was well deserved. 
 Cardan appended to the Arithmetic a printed notice 
 
 1 It was published at Milan by Bernardo Caluschio, with a dedi- 
 cation dated 1537 to Francesco Gaddi, a descendant of the famous 
 family of Florence. This man was Prior of the Augustinian Canons 
 in Milan, and a great personage, but ill fortune seems to have over- 
 taken him in his latter days. Cardan writes (Opera, torn. i. p. 107) : 
 " qui cum mihi amicus esset dum floreret, Rexque cognomine ob 
 potentiam appellaretur, conjectus in carcerem, miser vitam ibi, ne 
 dicam crudeliter, finivit : nam per quindecim dies in profundissima 
 gorgyne fuit, ut vivus sepeliretur." 
 
7 2 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 which may be regarded as an early essay in advertising. 
 He was fully convinced that his works were valuable and 
 quite worth the sums of money he asked for them ; the 
 world was blind, perhaps wilfully, to their merits, there- 
 fore he now determined that it should no longer be able 
 to quote ignorance of the author as an excuse for not 
 buying the book. This appendix was a notification to the 
 learned men of Europe that the writer of the Practice of 
 Arithmetic had in his press at home thirty- four other 
 works in MS. which they might read with profit, and that 
 of these only two had been printed, to wit the De Malo 
 Medendi Usu and a tract on Simples. This advertise- 
 ment had something of the character of a legal docu- 
 ment, for it invoked the authority of the Emperor to 
 protect the copyright of Cardan's books within the 
 Duchy of Milan for ten years, and to prevent the intro- 
 duction of them from abroad. 
 
 The Arithmetic proved far superior to any other 
 treatise extant, and everywhere won the approval of the 
 learned. It was from Nuremberg that its appearance 
 brought the most valuable fruits. Andreas Osiander, 1 a 
 learned humanist and a convert to Lutheranism, and 
 Johannes Petreius, an eminent printer, were evidently 
 impressed by the terms of Cardan's advertisement, for 
 they wrote to him and offered in combination to edit 
 and print any of the books awaiting publication in his 
 study at Milan. The result of this offer was the reprint- 
 ing of De Malo Medendi, and subsequently of the tract on 
 Judicial Astrology, and of the treatise De Consolations; 
 the Book of the Great Art, the treatises De Sapientia 
 and De Immortalitate Animomm were published in the 
 
 1 There is a reference to Osiander in De Subtilitate, p. 523. 
 Cardan gives a full account of his relations with Osiander and 
 Petreius in Opera, torn. i. p. 67. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 73 
 
 first instance by these same patrons from the Nuremberg 
 press. 
 
 But Cardan, while he was hard at work on his Arith- 
 metic, had not forgotten a certain report which had 
 caused no slight stir in the world of Mathematics some 
 three years before the issue of his book on Arithmetic, 
 an episode which may be most fittingly told in his own 
 words. "At this time 1 it happened that there came to 
 Milan a certain Brescian named Giovanni Colla, a man of 
 tall stature, and very thin, pale, swarthy, and hollow-eyed. 
 He was of gentle manners, slow in gait, sparing of his 
 words, full of talent, and skilled in mathematics. His 
 business was to bring word to me that there had been 
 recently discovered two new rules in Algebra for the 
 solution of problems dealing with cubes and numbers. 
 I asked him who had found them out, whereupon he 
 told me the name of the discoverer was Scipio Ferreo 
 of Bologna. ' And who else knows these rules?' I said. 
 He answered, ' Niccolo Tartaglia and Antonio Maria 
 Fiore.' And indeed some time later Tartaglia, when 
 he came to Milan, explained them to me, though un- 
 willingly ; and afterwards I myself, when working with 
 Ludovico Ferrari, 2 made a thorough study of the rules 
 aforesaid. We devised certain others, heretofore un- 
 noticed, after we had made trial of these new rules, and 
 out of this material I put together my Book of the 
 Great Art"* 
 
 Before dealing with the events which led to the 
 composition of the famous work above-named, it may 
 
 . l November 1536. 
 
 2 Ferrari was one of Cardan's most distinguished pupils. " Ludo- 
 vicus Ferrarius Bononiensis qui Mathematicas et Mediolani et in 
 patria sua professus est, et singularis in illis eruditionis." De Vita 
 Propria, ch. xxxv. p. in. There is a short memoir of Ferrari in 
 Opera, torn. ix. 3 Opera, torn. i. p. 66. 
 
74 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 be permitted to take a rapid survey of the condition 
 of Algebra at the time when Cardan sat down to write. 
 Up to the beginning of the sixteenth century the 
 knowledge of Algebra in Italy, originally derived from 
 Greek and Arabic sources, had made very little progress, 
 and the science had been developed no farther than to 
 provide for the solution of equations of the first or 
 second degree. 1 In the preface to the Liber Artis 
 Magnce Cardan writes : " This art takes its origin 
 from a certain Mahomet, the son of Moses, an Arabian, 
 a fact to which Leonard the Pisan bears ample testimony. 
 He left behind him four rules, with his demonstrations 
 of the same, which I duly ascribe to him in their proper 
 place. After a long interval of time, some student, 
 whose identity is uncertain, deduced from the original 
 four rules three others, which Luca Paciolus put with 
 the original ones into his book. Then three more were 
 discovered from the original rules, also by some one 
 unknown, but these attracted very little notice though 
 they were far more useful than the others, seeing that 
 they taught how to arrive at the value of the cubus and 
 the numerus and of the cubus quadratus? But in 
 recent times Scipio Ferreo of Bologna discovered 
 
 1 Fra Luca's book, Summa de Arithmetica Geometria Propor- 
 tioni e" Proportionalita, extends as far as the solution of quadratic 
 equations, of which only the positive roots were used. At this 
 time letters were rarely used to express known quantities. 
 
 2 The early writers on Algebra used numerus for the absolute or 
 known term, res or cosa for the first power, quadratum for the 
 second, and cubus for the third. The signs + and - first appear 
 in the work of Stifelius, a German writer, who published a book of 
 Arithmetic in 1544. Robert Recorde in his Whetstone of Wit 
 seems first to have used the sign of equality =. Vieta in France 
 first applied letters as general symbols of quantity, though the 
 earlier algebraists used them occasionally, chiefly as abbreviations. 
 Aristotle also used them in the Physics Libri. Hist, des Sciences 
 MathhnatiqueS) i. 104. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 75 
 
 the rule of the cubus and the res equal to the numerus 
 (x 3 + pxq)> truly a beautiful and admirable dis- 
 covery. For this Algebraic art outdoes all other subtlety 
 of man, and outshines the clearest exposition mortal wit 
 can achieve : a heavenly gift indeed, and a test of the 
 powers of a man's mind. So excellent is it in itself that 
 whosoever shall get possession thereof, will be assured 
 that no problem exists too difficult for him to disentangle. 
 As a rival of Ferreo, Niccolo Tartaglia of Brescia, my 
 friend, at that time when he engaged in a contest with 
 Antonio Maria Fiore, the pupil of Ferreo, made out this 
 same rule to help secure the victory, and this rule he 
 imparted to me after I had diligently besought him 
 thereanent. I, indeed, had been deceived by the words 
 of Luca Paciolus, who denied that there could be any 
 general rule besides these which he had published, so I 
 was not moved to seek that which I despaired of finding ; 
 but, having made myself master of Tartaglia's method of 
 demonstration, I understood how many other results 
 might be attained ; and, having taken fresh courage, 
 I worked these out, partly by myself and partly by the 
 aid of Ludovico Ferrari, a former pupil of mine. Now 
 all the discoveries made by the men aforesaid are 
 here marked with their names. Those unsigned were 
 found out by me ; and the demonstrations are all mine, 
 except three discovered by Mahomet and two by 
 Ludovico." l 
 
 This is Cardan's account of the scheme and origin of 
 his book, and the succeeding pages will be mainly an 
 amplification thereof. The earliest work on Algebra 
 used in Italy was a translation of the MS. treatise of 
 Mahommed ben Musa of Corasan, and next in order is 
 a MS. written by a certain Leonardo da Pisa in 1202. 
 
 torn. iv. p. 222. 
 
76 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 Leonardo was a trader, who had learned the art during 
 his voyages to Barbary, and his treatise and that of 
 Mahommed were the sole literature on the subject up to 
 the year 1494, when Fra Luca Pacioli da Borgo 1 brought 
 out his volume treating of Arithmetic and Algebra as 
 well. This was the first printed work on the subject. 
 
 After the invention of printing the interest in Algebra 
 grew rapidly. From the time of Leonardo to that of 
 Fra Luca it had remained stationary. The important 
 fact that the resolution of all the cases of a problem 
 may be comprehended in a simple formula, which may 
 be obtained from the solution of one of its cases merely 
 by a change of the signs, was not known, but in 1505 
 the Scipio Ferreo alluded to by Cardan, a Bolognese 
 professor, discovered the rule for the solution of one 
 case of a compound cubic equation. This was the 
 discovery that Giovanni Colla announced when he went 
 to Milan in 1536. 
 
 Cardan was then working hard at his Arithmetic 
 which dealt also with elementary Algebra and he was 
 naturally anxious to collect in its pages every item of 
 fresh knowledge in the sphere of mathematics which 
 might have been discovered since the publication of the 
 last treatise. The fact that Algebra as a science had 
 made such scant progress for so many years, gave to 
 this new process, about which Giovanni Colla was 
 talking, an extraordinary interest in the sight of all 
 mathematical students ; wherefore when Cardan heard 
 the report that Antonio Maria Fiore, Ferreo's pupil, 
 had been entrusted by his master with the secret of 
 
 1 In the conclusion of the Treatise on Arithmetic, Cardan points 
 out certain errors in the work of Fra Luca. Fra Luca was a pupil 
 of Piero della Francesca, who was highly skilled in Geometry, and 
 who, according to Vasari, first applied perspective to the drawing 
 of the human form. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 77 
 
 this new process, and was about to hold a public dis- 
 putation at Venice with Niccolo Tartaglia, a mathe- 
 matician of considerable repute, he fancied that possibly 
 there would be game about well worth the hunting. 
 
 Fiore had already challenged divers opponents of less 
 weight in the other towns of Italy, but now that he 
 ventured to attack the well-known Brescian student, 
 mathematicians began to anticipate an encounter of 
 more than common interest. According to the custom 
 of the time, a wager was laid on the result of the contest, 
 and it was settled as a preliminary that each one of the 
 competitors should ask of the other thirty questions. 
 For several weeks before the time fixed for the contest 
 Tartaglia studied hard ; and such good use did he 
 make of his time that, when the day of the encounter 
 came, he not only fathomed the formula upon which 
 Fiore's hopes were based, but, over and beyond this, 
 elaborated two other cases of his own which neither 
 Fiore nor his master Ferreo had ever dreamt of. 
 
 The case which Ferreo had solved by some unknown 
 process was the equation x* + / x = q> and the new 
 forms of cubic equation which Tartaglia elaborated were 
 as follows: x* + p x 2 = q : and x* p x 2 = q. Before 
 the date of the meeting, Tartaglia was assured that the 
 victory would be his, and Fiore was probably just as 
 confident. Fiore put his questions, all of which hinged 
 upon the rule of Ferreo which Tartaglia had already 
 mastered, and these questions his opponent answered 
 without difficulty ; but when the turn of the other side 
 came, Tartaglia completely puzzled the unfortunate 
 Fiore, who managed indeed to solve one of Tartaglia's 
 questions, but not till after all his own had been 
 answered. By this triumph the fame of Tartaglia 
 spread far and wide, and Jerome Cardan, in consequence 
 
78 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 of the rumours of the Brescian's extraordinary skill, 
 became more anxious than ever to become a sharer in 
 the wonderful secret by means of which he had won 
 his victory. 
 
 Cardan was still engaged in working up his lecture 
 notes on Arithmetic into the Treatise when this contest 
 took place ; but it was not till four years later, in 1539, 
 that he took any steps towards the prosecution of his 
 design. If he knew anything of Tartaglia's character, 
 and it is reasonable to suppose that he did, he would 
 naturally hesitate to make any personal appeal to him, 
 and trust to chance to give him an opportunity of 
 gaining possession of the knowledge aforesaid, rather 
 than seek it at the fountain-head. Tartaglia was of 
 very humble birth, and according to report almost 
 entirely self-educated. Through a physical injury which 
 he met with in childhood his speech was affected ; and, 
 according to the common Italian usage, a nickname 1 
 which pointed to this infirmity was given to him. The 
 blow on the head, dealt to him by some French soldier 
 at the sack of Brescia in 1512, may have made him a 
 stutterer, but it assuredly did not muddle his wits; never- 
 theless, as the result of this knock, or for some other 
 cause, he grew up into a churlish, uncouth, and ill- 
 mannered man, and, if the report given of him by 
 Papadopoli 2 at the end of his history be worthy of 
 credit, one not to be entirely trusted as an autobiogra- 
 pher in the account he himself gives of his early days in 
 the preface to one of his works. Papadopoli's notice of 
 him states that he was in no sense the self-taught 
 scholar he represented himself to be, but that he was 
 indebted for some portion at least of his training to the 
 
 1 Tartaglia, i. e. the stutterer. 
 
 2 Papadopoli, Hist. Gymn. Pata. (Ven. 1724). 
 
JEROME CARDAN 79 
 
 beneficence of a gentleman named Balbisono, 1 who 
 took him to Padua to study. From the passage quoted 
 below he seems to have failed to win the goodwill of 
 the Brescians, and to have found Venice a city more to 
 his taste. It is probable that the contest with Fiore 
 took place after his final withdrawal from his birthplace 
 to Venice. 
 
 In 1537 Tartaglia published a treatise on Artillery, 
 but he gave no sign of making public to the world his 
 discoveries in Algebra. Cardan waited on, but the 
 morose Brescian would not speak, and at last he 
 determined to make a request through a certain Messer 
 Juan Antonio, a bookseller, that, in the interests of 
 learning, he might be made a sharer of Tartaglia's 
 secret. Tartaglia has given a version of this part of 
 the transaction ; and, according to what is there set 
 down, Cardan's request, even when recorded in Tartaglia's 
 own words, does not appear an unreasonable one, for up 
 
 1 " Balbisonem post relatam jurisprudentias lauream redeuntem 
 Brixiam Nicolaus secutus est, caepitque ex Mathematicis gloriam 
 sibi ac divitias parare, seque paupertatis impatiens, ac fortunaa 
 melioris cupidus, quam dum Brixis tuetur, homo morosse, et 
 inurbanas rusticitatis prope omnium civium odia sibi conciliavit. 
 Quamobrem alibi vivere coactus, varias Italias urbes incoluit, ac 
 Ferrariae, Parmas, Mediolani, Romae, Genuse, arithmeticam, 
 geometricam, ceteraque quas ad Mathesim pertinent, docuit ; de- 
 pugnavitque scriptis accerrimis cum Cardano ac sibi ex illis quae- 
 sivit nomen et gloriam. Tandem domicilium posuit Venetiis, ubi non 
 a Senatoribus modo, ut mos Venetus habet eniditorum hominum 
 studiosissimus, maximi habitus est, at etiam a variis Magnatum ac 
 Principum legatis praemiis ac muneribus auctus sortem, quam 
 tamdiu expetierat visus sibi est conciliasse. Ergo ratus se 
 majorem, quam ut a civibus suis contemneretur, Brixiam rediit, 
 ubi spe privati stipendii Euclidis elementa explanare crepit ; sed 
 quae ilium olim a civitate sua austeritas, rustica, acerba, morosa, 
 depulerat, eadem ilium in eum apud omnes contemptum, et odium 
 iterum dejicit, ut exinde horrendus ac detestabilis omnibus fugere, 
 atque iterum Venetias confugere compulsus fuerit. Ibi persenex 
 decessit.'' Papadopoli, Hist, Gymn. Pata., ii. p. 210. 
 
80 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 to this time Tartaglia had never announced that he 
 had any intention of publishing his discoveries as part 
 of a separate work on Mathematics. There was indeed 
 a good reason why he should refrain from doing this in 
 the fact that he could only speak and write Italian, and 
 that in the Brescian dialect, being entirely ignorant of 
 Latin, the only tongue which the writer of a mathe- 
 matical work could use with any hope of success. 
 Tartaglia's record of his conversation with Messer Juan 
 Antonio, the emissary employed by Cardan, and of all 
 the subsequent details of the controversy, is preserved 
 in his principal work, Quesiti et Inventioni Diverse de 
 Nicolo Tartalea Brisciano} a record which furnishes 
 abundant and striking instance of his jealous and 
 suspicious temper. Much of it is given in the form of 
 dialogue, the terms of which are perhaps a little too 
 precise to carry conviction of its entire sincerity and 
 spontaneity. It was probably written just after the 
 final cause of quarrel in 1545, and its main object seems 
 to be to set the author right in the sight of the world, 
 and to exhibit Cardan as a meddlesome fellow not to 
 be trusted, and one ignorant of the very elements of the 
 art he professed to teach. 2 
 
 The inquiry begins with a courteously worded request 
 from Messer Juan Antonio (speaking on behalf of Messer 
 Hieronimo Cardano), that Messer Niccolo would make 
 known to his principal the rule by means of which he 
 had made such short work of Antonio Fiore's thirty 
 questions. It had been told to Messer Hieronimo that 
 Fiore's thirty questions had led up to a case of the cosa 
 
 1 This work is the chief authority for the facts which follow. 
 The edition referred to is that of Venice, 1546. There is also a 
 full account of the same in Cossali, Origine delF Algebra (Parma, 
 1799), vol. ii. p. 96. 
 
 2 Quesiti et Invention! , p. 115. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 81 
 
 and the cubus equal to the numerus, and that Messer 
 Niccolo had discovered a general rule for such case. 
 Messer Hieronimo now especially desired to be taught 
 this rule. If the inventor should be willing to let this 
 rule be published, it should be published as his own dis- 
 covery ; but, if he were not disposed to let the same be 
 made known to the world, it should be kept a pro- 
 found secret. To this request Tartaglia replied that, if 
 at any time he might publish his rule, he would give it 
 to the world in a work of his own under his own name, 
 whereupon Juan Antonio moderated his demand, and 
 begged to be furnished merely with a copy of the thirty 
 questions preferred by Fiore, and Tartaglia's solutions 
 of the same ; but Messer Niccolo was too wary a bird 
 to be taken with such a lure as this. To grant so 
 much, he replied, would be to tell everything, inasmuch 
 as Cardan could easily find out the rule, if he should 
 be furnished with a single question and its solution. 
 Next Juan Antonio handed to Tartaglia eight alge- 
 braical questions which had been confided to him by 
 Cardan, and asked for answers to them ; but Tartaglia, 
 having glanced at them, declared that they were not 
 framed by Cardan at all, but by Giovanni Colla. Colla, 
 he declared, had sent him one of these questions for 
 solution some two years ago. Another, he (Tartaglia) 
 had given to Colla, together with a solution thereof. 
 Juan Antonio replied by way of contradiction some- 
 what lamely that the questions had been handed over 
 to him by Cardan and no one else, wishing to maintain, 
 apparently, that no one else could possibly have been 
 concerned in them, whereupon Tartaglia replied that, 
 supposing the questions had been given by Cardan to 
 Juan Antonio his messenger, Cardan must have got the 
 questions from Colla, and have sent them on to him 
 
82 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 (Tartaglia) for solution because he could not arrive at 
 the meaning of them himself. He waved aside Juan 
 Antonio's perfectly irrelevant and fatuous protests that 
 Cardan would not in any case have sent these questions 
 if they had been framed by another person, or if he had 
 been unable to solve them. Tartaglia, on the other hand, 
 declared that Cardan certainly did not comprehend 
 them. If he did not know the rule by which Fiore's 
 questions had been answered (that of the cosa and the 
 cubus equal to the numerus), how could he solve these 
 questions which he now sent, seeing that certain of them 
 involved operations much more complicated than that 
 of the rule above written ? If he understood the ques- 
 tions which he now sent for solution, he could not want 
 to be taught this rule. Then Juan Antonio moderated 
 his demand still farther, and said he would be satisfied 
 with a copy of the questions which Fiore had put to 
 Tartaglia, adding that the favour would be much 
 greater if Tartaglia's own questions were also given. 
 He probably felt that it would be mere waste of breath 
 to beg again for Tartaglia's answers. The end of the 
 matter was that Tartaglia handed over to the messenger 
 the questions which Fiore had propounded in the 
 Venetian contest, and authorized Juan Antonio to get a 
 copy of his own from the notary who had drawn up the 
 terms of the disputation with Fiore. The date of this 
 communication is January 2, 1539, an d on February 12 
 Cardan writes a long letter to Tartaglia, complaining in 
 somewhat testy spirit of the reception given to his 
 request. He is aggrieved that Tartaglia should have 
 sent him nothing but the questions put to him by Fiore, 
 thirty in number indeed, but only one in substance, and 
 that he should have dared to hint that those which he 
 (Cardan) had sent for solution were not his own, but 
 
JEROME CARDAN 83 
 
 the property of Giovanni Colla. Cardan had found 
 Colla to be a conceited fool, and had dragged the 
 conceit out of him a process which he was now about 
 to repeat for the benefit of Messer Niccolo Tartaglia. 
 The letter goes on to contradict all Tartaglia's assertions 
 by arguments which do not seem entirely convincing, 
 and the case is not made better by the abusive passages 
 interpolated here and there, and by the demonstration 
 of certain errors in Tartaglia's book on Artillery. In 
 short a more injudicious letter could not have been 
 written by any man hoping to get a favour done to him 
 by the person addressed. 
 
 In the special matter of the problems which he sent 
 to Tartaglia by the bookseller Juan Antonio, Cardan 
 made a beginning of that tricky and crooked course 
 which he followed too persistently all through this 
 particular business. In his letter he maintains with a 
 show of indignation that he had long known these 
 questions, had known them in fact before Colla knew 
 how to count ten, implying by these words that he 
 knew how to solve them, while in reality all he knew 
 about them was the fact that they existed. Tartaglia 
 in his answer is not to be moved from his belief, and 
 tells Cardan flatly that he is still convinced Giovanni 
 Colla took the questions to Milan, where he found no 
 one able to solve them, not even Messer Hieronimo 
 Cardano, and that the mathematician last-named sent 
 them on by the bookseller for solution, as has been 
 already related. 
 
 This letter of Tartaglia's bears the date of February 
 13, 1539, and after reading it and digesting its contents, 
 Cardan seems to have come to the conclusion that he 
 was not working in the right way to get possession of 
 this secret which he felt he must needs master, if he 
 
84 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 wanted his forthcoming book to mark a new epoch in 
 this History of Mathematics, and that a change of 
 tactics was necessary. Alfonso d'Avalos, Cardan's 
 friend and patron, was at this time the Governor of 
 Milan. D'Avalos was a man of science, as well as a 
 soldier, and Cardan had already sent to him a copy of 
 Tartaglia's treatise on Artillery, deeming that a work of 
 this kind would not fail to interest him. In his first 
 letter to Tartaglia he mentions this fact, while picking 
 holes in the writer's theories concerning transmitted 
 force and views on gravitation. This mention of the 
 name of D'Avalos, the master of many legions and of 
 many cannons as well, to a man who had written a 
 Treatise on the management of Artillery, and devised 
 certain engines and instruments for the management of 
 the same, was indeed a clever cast, and the fly was 
 tempting enough to attract even so shy a fish as Niccolo 
 Tartaglia. In his reply to Jerome's scolding letter of 
 February 12, 1539, Tartaglia concludes with a description 
 of the instruments which he was perfecting : a square to 
 regulate the discharge of cannon, and to level and 
 determine every elevation ; and another instrument for 
 the investigation of distances upon a plane surface. He 
 ends with a request that Cardan will accept four copies 
 of the engines afpresaid, two for himself and two for the 
 Marchese d'Avalos. 
 
 The tone of this letter shows that Cardan had at 
 least begun to tame the bear, who now seemed dis- 
 posed to dance ad libitum to the pleasant music of words 
 suggesting introductions to the governor, and possible 
 patronage of these engines for the working of artillery. 
 Cardan's reply of March 19, 1539, is friendly too 
 friendly indeed and the wonder is that Tartaglia's 
 suspicions were not aroused by its almost sugary polite- 
 
JEROME CARDAN 85 
 
 ness. It begins with an attempt to soften down the 
 asperities of their former correspondence, some abuse of 
 Giovanni Colla, and an apology for the rough words of 
 his last epistle. Cardan then shows how their mis- 
 understanding arose chiefly from a blunder made by 
 Juan Antonio in delivering the message, and invites 
 Tartaglia to come and visit him in his own house in 
 Milan, so that they might deliberate together on mathe- 
 matical questions ; but the true significance of the letter 
 appears in the closing lines. " I told the Marchese of 
 the instruments which you had sent him, and he showed 
 himself greatly pleased with all you had done. And he 
 commanded me to write to you forthwith in pressing 
 terms, and to tell you that, on the receipt of my letter, 
 you should come to Milan without fail, for he desires to 
 speak with you. And I, too, exhort you to come at 
 once without further deliberation, seeing that this said 
 Marchese is wonted to reward all men of worth in such 
 noble and magnanimous and liberal fashion that none 
 of them ever goes away dissatisfied." 
 
 The receipt of this letter seems to have disquieted 
 Tartaglia somewhat ; for he has added a note to it, in 
 which he says that Cardan has placed him in a position 
 of embarrassment. He had evidently wished for an in- 
 troduction to D'Avalos, but now it was offered to him 
 it seemed a burden rather than a benefit. He disliked 
 the notion of going to Milan ; yet, if he did not go, the 
 Marchese d'Avalos might take offence. But in the end 
 he decided to undertake the journey ; and, as D'Avalos 
 happened then to be absent from Milan on a visit to 
 his country villa at Vigevano, he stayed for three days 
 in Cardan's house. As a recorder of conversations Tar- 
 taglia seems to have had something of Boswell's gift. 
 He gives an abstract of an eventful dialogue with his 
 
86 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 host on March 25, 1539, which Cardan begins by a 
 gentle reproach anent his guest's reticence in the matter 
 of the rule of the cosa and the cubus equal to the numerus. 
 Tartaglia's reply to this complaint seems reasonable 
 enough (it must be borne in mind that he is his own 
 reporter), and certainly helps to absolve him from the 
 charge sometimes made against him that he was nothing 
 more than a selfish curmudgeon who had resolved to 
 let his knowledge die with him, rather than share it 
 with other mathematicians of whom he was jealous. 
 He told Cardan plainly that he kept his rules a secret 
 because, for the present, it suited his purpose to do so. 
 At this time he had not the leisure to elaborate farther 
 the several rules in question, being engaged over a 
 translation of Euclid into Italian ; but, when this work 
 should be completed, he proposed to publish a treatise 
 on Algebra in which he would disclose to the world all 
 the rules he already knew, as well as many others which 
 he hoped to discover in the course of his present work. 
 He concludes : " This is the cause of my seeming dis- 
 courtesy towards your excellency. I have been all the 
 ruder, perhaps, because you write to me that you are 
 preparing a book similar to mine, and that you propose 
 to publish my inventions, and to give me credit for the 
 same. This I confess is not to my taste, forasmuch as 
 I wish to set forth my discoveries in my own works, 
 and not in those of others." In his reply to this, Cardan 
 points out that he had promised, if Tartaglia so desired, 
 that he would not publish the rules at all ; but here 
 Messer Niccolo's patience and good manners gave way, 
 and he told Messer Hieronimo bluntly that he did not 
 believe him. Then said Cardan : " I swear to you by 
 the Sacred Evangel, and by myself as a gentleman, that 
 I will not only abstain from publishing your discoveries 
 
JEROME CARDAN 87 
 
 if you will make them known to me but that I will 
 promise and pledge my faith of a true Christian to set 
 them down for my own use in cypher, so that after my 
 death no one may be able to understand them. If you 
 will believe this promise, believe it ; if you will not, let 
 us have done with the matter." " If I were not disposed 
 to believe such oaths as these you now swear," said 
 Tartaglia, " I might as well be set down as a man with- 
 out any faith at all. I have determined to go forthwith 
 to Vigevano to visit the Signer Marchese, as I have now 
 been here for three days and am weary of the delay, 
 but I promise when I return that I will show you all 
 the rules." Cardan replied : " As you are bent on going 
 to Vigevano, I will give you a letter of introduction to 
 the Marchese, so that he may know who you are ; 
 but I would that, before you start, you show me the rule 
 as you have promised." " I am willing to do this," said 
 Tartaglia, " but I must tell you that, in order to be able 
 to recall at any time my system of working, I have ex- 
 pressed it in rhyme ; because, without this precaution, 
 I must often have forgotten it. I care naught that my 
 rhymes are clumsy, it has been enough for me that they 
 have served to remind me of my rules. These I will 
 write down with my own hand, so that you may be 
 assured that my discovery is given to you correctly." 
 Then follow Tartaglia's verses: 
 
 " Quando chel cubo con le cose apresso 
 Se agualia a qualche numero discrete 
 Trouan dui altri different! in esso 
 Dapoi terrai questo per consueto 
 Ch'el lor' produtto sempre sia eguale 
 Al terzo cubo delle cose neto 
 El residue poi suo generale 
 Belli lor lati cubi ben sottratti 
 Varra la tua cosa principale. 
 In el secondo de cotesti atti 
 
88 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 Quando chel cubo restasse lui solo 
 Tu osseruarai quest' altri contratti 
 Del numer farai due tal part 'a uolo 
 Che luna in 1'altra si produca schietto 
 El terzo cubo delle cose in stolo 
 Delle qual poi, per commun precetto 
 Torrai li lati cubi insieme gionti 
 Et cotal summa sara il tuo concetto 
 Et terzo poi de questi nostri conti 
 Se solve col recordo se ben guardi 
 Che per natura son quasi congionti 
 Questi trouai, et non con passi tardi 
 Nel mille cinquecent' e quatro e trenta 
 Con fondamenti ben said' e gagliardi 
 Nella citta del mar' intorno centa." 
 
 Having handed over to his host these rhymes, with 
 the precious rules enshrined therein, Tartaglia told him 
 that, with so clear an exposition, he could not fail to 
 understand them, ending with a warning hint to Cardan 
 that, if he should publish the rules, either in the work he 
 had in hand, or in any future one, either under the name 
 of Tartaglia or of Cardan, he, the author, would put into 
 print certain things which Messer Hieronimo would not 
 find very pleasant reading. 
 
 After all Tartaglia was destined to quit Milan without 
 paying his respects to D'Avalos. There is not a word 
 in his notes which gives the reason of this eccentric 
 action on his part. He simply says that he is no 
 longer inclined to go to Vigevano, but has made up his 
 mind to return to Venice forthwith ; and Cardan, 
 probably, was not displeased at this exhibition of 
 petulant impatience on the part of his guest, but was 
 rather somewhat relieved to see Messer Niccolo ride 
 away, now that he had extracted from him the coveted 
 information. From the beginning to the end of this 
 affair Cardan has been credited with an amount of 
 subtle cunning which he assuredly did not manifest at 
 
JEROME CARDAN 89 
 
 other times when his wits were pitted for contest with 
 those of other men. It has been advanced to his dis- 
 paragement that he walked in deceitful ways from the 
 very beginning ; that he dangled before Tartaglia's eyes 
 the prospect of gain and preferment simply for the 
 purpose of enticing him to Milan, where he deemed he 
 might use more efficaciously his arguments for the ac- 
 complishment of the purpose which was really in his 
 mind ; that he had no intention of advancing Tartaglia's 
 fortunes when he suggested the introduction to D'Avalos, 
 but that the Governor of Milan was brought into the 
 business merely that he might be used as a potent ally 
 in the attack upon Tartaglia's obstinate silence. Whether 
 this may have been his line of action or not, the issue 
 shows that he was fully able to fight his battle alone, 
 and that his powers of persuasion and hard swearing 
 were adequate when occasion arose for their exercise. 
 It is quite possible that Tartaglia, when he began to 
 reflect over what he had done by writing out and hand- 
 ing over to Cardan his mnemonic rhymes, fell into an 
 access of suspicious anger at Cardan for his wheedling 
 persistency, and at himself for yielding thereto and 
 packed himself off in a rage with the determination to 
 have done with Messer Hieronimo and all his works. 
 Certainly his carriage towards Cardan in the weeks 
 ensuing, as exhibited in his correspondence, does not 
 picture him in an amiable temper. On April 9 Jerome 
 wrote to him in a very friendly strain, expressing regret 
 that his guest should have left Milan without seeing 
 D'Avalos, and fear lest he might have prejudiced his 
 fortunes by taking such a step. He then goes on to 
 describe to Tartaglia the progress he is making in his 
 work with the Practice of Arithmetic, and to ask him 
 for help in solving one of the cases in Algebra, the rule 
 
90 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 for which was indeed contained in Tartaglia's verses, 
 but expressed somewhat obscurely, for which reason 
 Cardan had missed its meaning. 1 In his reply, Tar- 
 taglia ignores Jerome's courtesies altogether, and tells 
 him that what he especially desires at the present 
 moment is a sight of that volume on the Practice of 
 Arithmetic, "for," says he, "if I do not see it soon, I 
 shall begin to suspect that this work of yours will prob- 
 ably make manifest some breach of faith ; in other words, 
 that it will contain as interpolations certain of the rules 
 I taught you." Niccolo then goes on to explain the 
 difficulty which had puzzled Cardan, using terms which 
 showed plainly that he had as poor an opinion of his 
 correspondent's wit as of his veracity. 
 
 Cardan was an irascible man, and it is a high tribute 
 to his powers of restraint that he managed to keep his 
 temper under the uncouth insults of such a letter as 
 the foregoing. The more clearly Tartaglia's jealous, 
 suspicious nature displays itself, the greater seems the 
 wonder that a man of such a disposition should ever 
 have disclosed such a secret. He did not believe Cardan 
 when he promised that he would not publish the rules 
 in question without his (the discoverer's) consent why 
 then did he believe him when he swore by the Gospel ? 
 The age was one in which the binding force of an oath 
 was not regarded as an obligation of any particular 
 sanctity if circumstances should arise which made the 
 violation of the oath more convenient than its observ- 
 ance. However, the time was not yet come for Jerome 
 
 1 Cardan writes: " Vi supplico per I'amor che mi portati, et per 
 1'amicitia ch'e tra noi, che spero durara fin che viveremo, che mi 
 mandati sciolta questa questione. I cubo piu 3. cose egual a 10." 
 Cardan had mistaken (| ^) 3 for i #*> or tne cube of \ of the co- 
 efficient for \ of the cube of the co-efficient. Quesiti et Inventioni 
 p. 124. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 91 
 
 to begin to quibble with his conscience. On May 12, 
 1539, he wrote another letter to Tartaglia, also in a very 
 friendly tone, reproaching him gently for his suspicions, 
 and sending a copy of the Practice of Arithmetic to 
 show him that they were groundless. He protested 
 that Tartaglia might search from beginning to end 
 without finding any trace of his jealously-guarded rules, 
 inasmuch as, beyond correcting a few errors, the writer 
 had only carried Algebra to the point where Fra Luca 
 had left it. Tartaglia searched, and though he could not 
 put his finger on any spot which showed that Messer 
 Hieronimo had broken his oath, he found what must 
 have been to him as a precious jewel, to wit a mistake 
 in reckoning, which he reported to Cardan in these 
 words : 
 
 " In this process your excellency has made such a 
 'gross mistake that I am amazed thereat, forasmuch as 
 any man with half an eye must have seen it indeed, if 
 you had not gone on to repeat it in divers examples, I 
 should have set it down to a mistake of the printer." 
 After pointing out to Cardan the blunders aforesaid, 
 he concludes : " The whole of this work of yours is 
 ridiculous and inaccurate, a performance which makes 
 me tremble for your good name." l 
 
 Every succeeding page of Tartaglia's notes shows 
 more and more clearly that he was smarting under a 
 sense of his own folly in having divulged his secret. 
 Night and day he brooded over his excess of confidence, 
 and as time went by he let his suspicions of Cardan 
 grow into savage resentment. His ears were open to 
 every rumour which might pass from one class-room to 
 another. On July 10 a letter came to him from one 
 Maphio of Bergamo, a former pupil, telling how Cardan 
 1 Quesiti et Inventioni^ p. 125. 
 
92 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 was about to publish certain new mathematical rules in 
 a book on Algebra, and hinting that in all probability 
 these rules would prove to be Tartaglia's, whereupon he 
 at once jumped to the conclusion that Maphio's gossip 
 was the truth, and that this book would make public 
 the secret which Cardan had sworn to keep. He left 
 many of Cardan's letters unanswered ; but at last he 
 seems to have found too strong the temptation to say 
 something disagreeable ; so, in answer to a letter from 
 Cardan containing a request for help in solving an 
 equation which had baffled his skill, Tartaglia wrote 
 telling Cardan that he had bungled in his application of 
 the rule, and that he himself was now very sorry he had 
 ever confided the rule aforesaid to such a man. He ends 
 with further abuse of Cardan's Practice of Arithmetic, 
 which he declares to be merely a confused farrago of 
 other men's knowledge, 1 and with a remark which he 
 probably intended to be a crowning insult. " I well 
 remember when I was at your house in Milan, that you 
 told me you had never tried to discover the rule of the 
 cosa and the cubus equal to the numerus which was 
 found out by me, because Fra Luca had declared it to be 
 impossible ; 2 as if to say that, if you had set yourself to 
 the task you could have accomplished it, a thing which 
 sets me off laughing when I call to mind the fact that it 
 
 1 " Non ha datta fora tal opera come cose composto da sua testa 
 ma come cose ellette raccolte e copiate de diverse libri a penna." 
 Quesiti et Inventioni, p. 127. 
 
 2 Cardan repeats the remark in the first chapter of the Liber 
 Artis MagncB (Opera, torn. iv. p. 222). " Deceptus enim ego verbis 
 Lucas Paccioli, qui ultra sua capitula, generale ullum aliud esse posse 
 negat (quanquam tot jam antea rebus a me inventis, sub manibus 
 esset) desperabam tamen invenire, quod quaerere non audebam." 
 Perhaps he wrote them down as an apology or a defence against the 
 storm which he anticipated as soon as Tartaglia should have seen 
 the new Algebra. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 93 
 
 is now two months since I informed you of the blunders 
 you made in the extraction of the cube root, which 
 process is one of the first to be taught to students who 
 are beginning Algebra. Wherefore, if after the lapse 
 of all this time you have not been able to find a remedy 
 to set right this your mistake (which would have been 
 an easy matter enough), just consider whether in any 
 case your powers could have been equal to the discovery 
 of the rule aforesaid." 1 
 
 In this quarrel Messer Giovanni Colla had appeared 
 as the herald of the storm, when he carried to Milan 
 in 1536 tidings of the discovery of the new rule which 
 had put Cardan on the alert, and now, as the crisis 
 approached, he again came upon the scene, figuring as 
 unconscious and indirect cause of the final catastrophe. 
 On January 5, 1540, Cardan wrote to Tartaglia, telling 
 him that Colla had once more appeared in Milan, and 
 was boasting that he had found out certain new rules in 
 Algebra. He went on to suggest to his correspondent 
 that they should unite their forces in an attempt to 
 fathom this asserted discovery of Colla's, but to this 
 letter Tartaglia vouchsafed no reply. In his diary it 
 stands with a superadded note, in which he remarks 
 that he thinks as badly of Cardan as of Colla, and that, 
 as far as he is concerned, they may both of them go 
 whithersoever they will. 2 
 
 Colla propounded divers questions to the Algebraists 
 
 1 Subsequently Tartaglia wrote very bitterly against Cardan, as 
 the latter mentions in De Libris Propriis. " Nam etsi Nicolaus 
 Tartalea libris materna lingua editis nos calumniatur, impudentias 
 tamen ac stultitise suae non aliud testimonium quasras, quam ipsos 
 illius libros, in quibus nominatim splendidiorem unumquemque e 
 civibus suis proscindit : adeo ut nemo dubitet insanisse hominem 
 aliquo infortunio." Opera, torn. i. p. 80. 
 
 2 Quesiti et Invention^ p. 1 29. 
 
94 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 of Milan, and amongst them was one involving the 
 equation x^ + 6;tr 2 + 36 = 60^, one which he probably 
 found in some Arabian treatise. Cardan tried all his 
 ingenuity over this combination without success, but his 
 brilliant pupil, Ludovico Ferrari, worked to better pur- 
 pose, and succeeded at last in solving it by adding to 
 each side of the equation, arranged in a certain fashion, 
 some quadratic and simple quantities of which the 
 square root could be extracted. 1 Cardan seems to have 
 been baffled by the fact that the equation aforesaid 
 could not be solved by the recently-discovered rules, 
 because it produced a bi-quadratic. This difficulty 
 Ferrari overcame, and, pursuing the subject, he dis- 
 covered a general rule for the solution of all bi-quadratics 
 by means of a cubic equation. Cardan's subsequent 
 demonstration of this process is one of the masterpieces 
 of the Book of the Great Art. It is an example of the 
 use of assuming a new indeterminate quantity to intro- 
 duce into an equation, thus anticipating by a considerable 
 space of time Descartes, who subsequently made use of a 
 like assumption in a like case. 
 
 How far this discovery of Ferrari's covered the rules 
 given by Tartaglia to Cardan, and how far it relieved 
 Cardan of the obligation of secresy, is a problem fitted 
 for the consideration of the mathematician and the 
 casuist severally. 2 An apologist of Cardan might affirm 
 that he cannot be held to have acted in bad faith in 
 publishing the result of Ferrari's discovery. If this 
 
 1 Montucla, Histoire de Math. i. 596, gives a full account of 
 Ferrari's process. 
 
 2 In the De Vita Propria, Cardan dismisses the matter briefly : 
 " Ex hoc ad artem magnam, quam collegi, dum Jo. Colla certaret 
 nobiscum, et Tartalea, a quo primum acceperam capitulum, qui 
 maluit semulum habere, et superiorem, quam amicum et beneficio 
 devinctum, cum alterius fuisset inventum." ch. xlv. p. 175. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 9$ 
 
 discovery included and even went beyond Tartaglia's, 
 so much the worse for Tartaglia. The lesser discovery 
 (Tartaglia's) Cardan never divulged before Ferrari un-* 
 ravelled Giovanni Colla's puzzle ; but it was inevitable 
 that it must be made known to the world as a part of 
 the greater discovery (Ferrari's) which Cardan was in no 
 way bound to keep a secret. The case might be said to 
 run on all fours with that where a man confides a secret 
 to a friend under a promise of silence, which promise the 
 friend keeps religiously, until one day he finds that the 
 secret, and even more than the secret, is common talk of 
 the market-place. Is the obligation of silence, with which 
 he was bound originally, still to lie upon the friend, even 
 when he may have sworn to observe it by the Holy 
 Evangel and the honour of a gentleman ; and is the fact 
 that great renown and profit would come to him by 
 publishing the secret to be held as an additional reason 
 for keeping silence, or as a justification for speech? In 
 forming a judgment after a lapse of three and a half 
 centuries as to Cardan's action, while having regard both 
 to the sanctity of an oath at the time in question, and to 
 the altered state of the case between him and Tartaglia 
 consequent on Ludovico Ferrari's discovery, an hypo- 
 thesis not overstrained in the direction of chanty may be 
 advanced to the effect that Cardan might well have 
 deemed he was justified in revealing to the world the 
 rules which Tartaglia had taught him, considering that 
 these isolated rules had been developed by his own 
 study and Ferrari's into a principle by which it would 
 be possible to work a complete revolution in the science 
 of Algebra. 
 
 In any case, six years were allowed to elapse before 
 Cardan, by publishing Tartaglia's rules in the Book of 
 the Great Art, did the deed which, in the eyes of many, 
 
96 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 branded him as a liar and dishonest, and drove Tartaglia 
 almost wild with rage. That his offence did not meet 
 with universal reprobation is shown by negative testi- 
 mony in the Judidum de Cardano, by Gabriel Naude*. 1 
 In the course of his essay Naude lets it be seen how 
 thoroughly he dislikes the character of the man about 
 whom he writes. No evil disposition attributed to Cardan 
 by himself or by his enemies is left unnoticed, and a 
 lengthy catalogue of his offences is set down, but this list 
 does not contain the particular sin of broken faith in 
 the matter of Tartaglia's rules. On the contrary, after 
 abusing and ridiculing a large portion of his work, 
 Naude breaks out into almost rhapsodical eulogy about 
 Cardan's contributions to Mathematical science. " Quis 
 negabit librum de Proportionibus dignum esse, qui cum 
 pulcherrimis antiquorum inventis conferatur ? Quis in 
 Arithmetica non stupet, eum tot difficultates superasse, 
 quibus explicandis Villafrancus, Lucas de Burgo, Stife- 
 lius, Tartalea, vix ac ne vix quidem pares esse potuis- 
 sent ? " It seems hard to believe, after reading elsewhere 
 the bitter assaults of Naude, 2 that he would have neglected 
 so tempting an opportunity of darkening the shadows, 
 if he himself had felt the slightest offence, or if public 
 opinion in the learned world was in any perceptible 
 degree scandalized by the disclosure made by the 
 publication of the Book of the Great Art. 
 
 This book was published at Nuremberg in 1545, and 
 in its preface and dedication Cardan fully acknowledges 
 his obligations to Tartaglia and Ferrari, with respect to 
 the rules lately discussed, and gives a catalogue of the 
 
 1 Prefixed to the De Vita Propria. 
 
 2 In a question of broken faith, Cardan laid himself open 
 especially to attack by reason of his constant self-glorification in 
 the matter of veracity. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 97 
 
 former students of the Art, and attributes to each his 
 particular contribution to the mass of knowledge which 
 he here presents to the world. Leonardo da Pisa, 1 
 Fra Luca da Borgo, and Scipio Ferreo all receive due 
 credit for their work, and then Cardan goes on to speak 
 of " my friend Niccolo Tartaglia of Brescia, who, in his 
 contest with Antonio Maria Fiore, the pupil of Ferreo, 
 elaborated this rule to assure him of victory, a rule 
 which he made known to me in answer to my many 
 prayers." He goes on to acknowledge other obligations 
 to Tartaglia : 2 how the Brescian had first taught him that 
 algebraical discovery could be most effectively advanced 
 by geometrical demonstration, and how he himself had 
 followed this counsel, and had been careful to give the 
 demonstration aforesaid for every rule he laid down. 
 
 The Book of the Great Art was not published 
 till six years after Cardan had become the sharer of 
 Tartaglia's secret, which had thus had ample time to 
 germinate and bear fruit in the fertile brain upon which 
 it was cast. It is almost certain that the treatise as a 
 whole leaving out of account the special question of 
 the solution of cubic equations must have gained 
 enormously in completeness and lucidity from the fresh 
 knowledge revealed to the writer thereof by Tartaglia's 
 reluctant disclosure, and, over and beyond this, it must 
 be borne in mind that Cardan had been working for 
 several years at Giovanni Colla's questions in conjunction 
 
 1 Leonardo knew that quadratic equations might have two 
 positive roots, and Cardan pursued this farther by the discovery 
 that they might also have negative roots. 
 
 2 " Caput xxviii. De capitulo generali cubi et rerum aequalium 
 numero, Magistri Nicolai Tartaglias, Brixiensis Hoc capitulum 
 habui a prefato viro ante considerationem demonstrationum 
 secundi libri super Euclidem, et aequatio haec cadit in I&. cu v 
 binomii ex genere binomii secundi et quinti m. $. cuba uni- 
 versali recisi ejusdem binomii." Opera, torn. iv. p. 341. 
 
9 8 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 with Ferrari, an algebraist as famous as Tartaglia or 
 himself. The opening chapters of the book show that 
 Cardan was well acquainted with the chief properties of 
 the roots of equations of all sorts. He lays it down that 
 all square numbers have two different kinds of root, one 
 positive and one negative, 1 vera and ficta : thus the 
 root of 9 is either 3. or 3. He shows that when a case 
 has all its roots, or when none are impossible, the 
 number of its positive roots is the same as the number 
 of changes in the signs of the terms when they are all 
 brought to one side. In the case of x* 4- ^bx = 2r, 
 he demonstrates his first resolution of a cubic equation, 
 and gives his own version of his dealings with Tartaglia. 
 His chief obligation to the Brescian was the information 
 how to solve the three cases which follow, i. e. 3? + bx 
 = c. x* = bx + c. and x+*cbx, and this he freely 
 acknowledges, and furthermore admits the great service 
 of the system of geometrical demonstration which 
 Tartaglia had first suggested to him, and which he 
 always employed hereafter. He claims originality for 
 all processes in the book not ascribed to others, assert- 
 ing that all the demonstrations of existing rules were 
 his own except three which had been left by Mahommed 
 ben Musa, and two invented by Ludovico Ferrari. 
 
 With this vantage ground beneath his feet Cardan 
 raised the study of Algebra to a point it had never 
 reached before, and climbed himself to a height of fame 
 to which Medicine had not yet brought him. His name 
 as a mathematician was known throughout Europe, and 
 the success of his book was remarkable. In the De 
 
 1 Montucla, who as a historian of Mathematics has a strong bias 
 against Cardan, gives him credit for the discovery of the fictce 
 radices, but on the other hand he attributes to Vieta Cardan's dis- 
 covery of the method of changing a complete cubic equation into 
 one wanting the second term. Ed. 1729, p. 595. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 99 
 
 Libris Propriis there is a passage which indicates that 
 he himself was not unconscious of the renown he had 
 won, or disposed to underrate the value of his contribu- 
 tion to mathematical science. "And even if I were to 
 claim this art (Algebra) as my own invention, I should 
 perhaps be speaking only the truth, though Nicomachus, 
 Ptolemaeus, Paciolus, Boetius, have written much 
 thereon. For men like these never came near to dis- 
 cover one-hundredth part of the things discovered by me. 
 But with regard to this matter as with divers others 
 I leave judgment to be given by those who shall come 
 after me. Nevertheless I am constrained to call this 
 work of mine a perfect one, seeing that it well-nigh 
 transcends the bounds of human perception." 1 
 
 1 Opera, torn. i. p. 66. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 IT has been noted that Cardan quitted Pavia at the 
 end of 1544 on account of the bankruptcy of the 
 University, and that in 1546 a generous offer was made 
 to him on condition of his entering the service of Pope 
 Paul III.; an offer which after some hesitation he deter- 
 mined to refuse. In the autumn of this same year he 
 resumed his teaching at Pavia, a fact which sanctions 
 the assumption that this luckless seat of learning must 
 have been once more in funds. In the year following, in 
 1547, there came to him another offer of employment 
 accompanied by terms still more munificent than the 
 Pope's, conveyed through Vesalius 1 and the ambassador 
 of the King of Denmark. " The emolument was to be 
 a salary of three hundred gold crowns per annum of the 
 Hungarian currency, and in addition to these six hundred 
 more to be paid out of the tax on skins of price. This 
 last-named money differed in value by about an eighth 
 from the royal coinage, and would be somewhat slower 
 in coming in. Also the security for its payment was 
 not so solid, and would in a measure be subject to risk. 
 To this was farther added maintenance for myself and 
 
 1 Vesalius had certainly lectured on anatomy at Pavia, but it 
 would appear that Cardan did not know him personally, seeing 
 that he writes in De Libris Propriis (Opera, torn. i. p. 138) : " Bra- 
 savolum . . . nunquam vidi, ut neque Vesalium quamquam intimum 
 mihi amicum." , 
 
 100 
 
JEROME CARDAN 101 
 
 five servants and three horses. This offer I did not 
 accept because the country was very cold and damp, 
 and the people well-nigh barbarians ; moreover the rites 
 and doctrines of religion were quite foreign to those of 
 the Roman Church." l 
 
 Cardan was now forty-six years of age, a mathemati- 
 cian of European fame, and the holder of an honourable 
 post at an ancient university, which he might have 
 exchanged for other employment quite as dignified and 
 far more lucrative. In dealing with a character as 
 bizarre as his, it would be as a rule unprofitable to 
 search deeply for motives of action, but in this instance 
 it is no difficult matter to detect upon the surface 
 several causes which may have swayed him in this 
 decision to remain at Pavia. However firmly he may 
 have set himself to win fame as a physician, he was in 
 no way disposed to put aside those mathematical 
 studies in which he had already made so distinguished 
 a name, nor to abandon his astrology and chiromancy 
 and discursive reading of all kinds. At Pavia he would 
 find leisure for all these, and would in addition be able 
 to make good any arrears of medical and magical 
 knowledge into which he might have fallen during the 
 years so largely devoted to the production of the Book 
 of the Great Art. Moreover, the time in question was 
 one of the prime epochs in the history of the healing 
 art. A new light had just arisen in Vesalius, who had 
 recently published his book, Corporis Humani Fabrica, 
 and was lecturing in divers universities on the new 
 method of Anatomy, the actual dissection of the human 
 body. He went to Pavia in the course of his travels 
 and left traces of his visit in the form of a revived and 
 re-organized school of Anatomy. This fact alone would 
 1 De Vita Propria^ ch. xxxii. p. 99. 
 
102 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 have been a powerful attraction to Cardan, ever greedy 
 as he was of new knowledge, but there was another 
 reason which probably swayed him more strongly still, 
 to wit, the care of his eldest son's education and training. 
 Gian Battista Cardano was now in his fourteenth year, 
 and, according to the usages of the time, old enough to 
 make a beginning of his training in Medicine, the pro- 
 fession he was destined to follow. It is not recorded 
 whether or not he chose this calling for himself; but, 
 taking into account the deep and tender affection 
 Jerome always manifested towards his eldest son, it is 
 not likely that undue compulsion was used in the matter. 
 The youth, according to his father's description, strongly 
 favoured in person his grandfather Fazio. 1 He had 
 come into the world at a time when his parents' fortunes 
 were at their lowest ebb, during those terrible months 
 spent at Gallarate, 2 and in his adolescence he bore 
 divers physical evidences of the ill nurture it would be 
 unjust to call it neglect which he had received. At one 
 time he was indeed put in charge of a good nurse, but 
 he had to be withdrawn from her care almost immedi- 
 ately through her husband's jealousy, and he was next 
 sent to a slattern, who fed him with old milk, and not 
 enough of that ; or more often with chewed bread. 
 His body was swollen and unhealthy, he suffered 
 greatly from an attack of fever, which ultimately left 
 him deaf in one ear. He gave early evidence of a fine 
 
 1 In describing Fazio, Jerome writes: "Erat Euclidis operum 
 studiosus, et humeris incurvis : et films meus natu major ore, oculis, 
 incessu, humeris, illi simillimus." De Vita Propria, ch. iii. p. 8. 
 In the same chapter Fazio is described as " Blsesus in loquendo ; 
 variorum studiorum amator : ruber, oculis albis et quibus noctu 
 videret." 
 
 2 "At uxor mea imaginabatur assidue se videre calvariam 
 patris, qui erat absens dum utero gereret Jo : Baptistam." Parali- 
 pomenori) lib. iii. c. 21. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 103 
 
 taste in music, an inheritance from his father, and was, 
 according to Cardan's showing, upright and honest in 
 his carriage, gifted with talents which must, under 
 happier circumstances, have placed him in the first rank 
 of men of learning, and in every respect a youth of the 
 fairest promise. The father records that he himself, 
 though well furnished by experience in the art of 
 medicine, was now and again worsted by his son in 
 disputation, and alludes in words of pathetic regret to 
 divers problems, too deep for his own powers of solution, 
 which Gian Battista would assuredly have mastered in 
 the course of time. He does not forget to notice certain 
 of the young man's failings ; for he remarks that he was 
 temperate of speech, except when he was angered, and 
 then he would pour forth such a torrent of words that 
 he scarce seemed in his right mind. Cardan professes 
 to have discerned a cause for these failings, and the 
 calamities flowing therefrom, in the fact that Gian 
 Battista had the third and fourth toes of his right foot 
 united by a membrane ; he declares that, if he had 
 known of this in time, he would have counteracted the 
 evil by dividing the toes. 1 Gian Battista eventually 
 gained the baccalaureat in his twenty-second year, and 
 two years after became a member of the College. 
 
 The life which Cardan planned to lead at Pavia was 
 unquestionably a full one. He had several young men 
 under his care as pupils besides his son, amongst them 
 being a kinsman of his, Gasparo Cardano, a youth of 
 sterling virtue and a useful coadjutor in times to come. 
 He was at this time engaged on his most important 
 works in Medicine and Physical Science. He worked 
 hard at his profession, practising occasionally and read- 
 ing voraciously all books bearing on his studies. He 
 1 De Utilitate, p. 832. 
 
104 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 wrote and published several small works during the 
 
 four years from 1547 to 1551 of his Professorship at 
 
 Pavia; the most noteworthy of which were the Book of 
 
 / Precepts for the guidance of his children, and some 
 
 Treatises on the Preservation of Health. He also wrote 
 
 ' >}. a book on Physiognomy, or as he called it Metoposcopy, 
 
 an abstract of which appears as a chapter in De Utilitate 
 
 \ (lib. iii. c. 10), but the major part of his time must 
 
 / have been consumed in collecting and reducing to form 
 
 ^ the huge mass of facts out of which his two great works, 
 
 De Subtilitate and De Varietate Rerum, were built up. 
 
 A mere abstract of the contents of these wonderful 
 books would fill many pages, and prove as uninteresting 
 and unsuggestive as abstracts must always be ; and a 
 commentary upon the same, honestly executed, would 
 make a heavy draft on the working life-time of an 
 industrious student. In reference to each book the 
 author has left a statement of the reasons which impelled 
 him to undertake his task, the most cogent of which 
 were certain dreams. 1 Soon after he had begun to 
 write the De Astrorum Judiciis he dreamt one night 
 that his soul, freed from his body, was ranging the vault 
 of heaven near to the moon, and the soul of his father 
 was there likewise. But he could not see this spirit, 
 which spake to him saying, " Behold, I am given to you 
 as a comrade." The spirit of the father then went on 
 to tell the son how, after various stages of probation, he 
 would attain the highest heaven, and in the terms of 
 this discourse Cardan professed to discern the scheme 
 of his more important works. 
 
 The De Subtilitate represents Cardan's original con- 
 
 1 " Post ex geminatis somniis, scripsi libros de Subtilitate quos 
 impresses auxi et denuo superauctos tertio excudi curavi." De 
 Vita Propria, ch. xlv. p. 175. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 105 
 
 ception of a treatise dealing with the Cosmos, but 
 during the course of its preparation a vast mass of 
 subsidiary and contingent knowledge accumulated in 
 his note-books, and rendered necessary the publication 
 of a supplementary work, the De Varietate?- which, by 
 the time it was finished, had grown to a bulk exceeding 
 that of the original treatise. The seminal ideas which 
 germinated and produced such a vast harvest of printed 
 words, were substantially the same which had possessed 
 the brains of Paracelsus and Agrippa. Cardan postu- 
 lates in the beginning a certain sympathy between the 
 celestial bodies and our own, not merely general, but 
 distributive, the sun being in harmony with the heart, 
 and the moon with the animal humours. He considers 
 that all organized bodies are animated, so that what we 
 call the Spirit of Nature is present everywhere. Beyond 
 this everything is ruled by the properties of numbers. 2 
 Heat and moisture are the only real qualities in Nature, 
 the first being the formal, and the second the material, 
 cause of all things; these conceptions he gleaned 
 probably from some criticisms of Aristotle on the 
 archaic doctrines of Heraclitus and Thales as to the 
 origin of the universe. 
 
 It is no marvel that a writer, gifted with so bizarre and 
 imaginative a temper, so restless and greedy of know- 
 ledge, sitting down to work with such a projection 
 before him, should have produced the richest, and at 
 
 1 " Libros de Rerum varietate anno MDLVIII edidi : erant enim 
 reliquiae librorum de subtilitate." De Vita Propria^ p. 176. " Rever- 
 sus in patriam, perfeci libros XVII de Rerum varietate quos jampri- 
 dem inchoaveram." Opera, torn. i. p. no. He had collected much 
 material during his life at Gallarate. 
 
 2 Aristotle, Metaphysics^ book I. ch. v., contains an examination 
 of the Pythagorean doctrine which maintains Number to be the 
 substance of all things: a\\' auro TO direipov KUI avro ro sv ovffiav 
 dvai TOVTUV av icarijyopouvrai. 
 
io6 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 the same time the most chaotic, collection of the facts of 
 Natural Philosophy that had yet issued from the press. 
 The erudition and the industry displayed in the gather- 
 ing together of these vast masses of information, and in 
 their verification by experiment, are indeed amazing ; 
 and, in turning over his pages, it is impossible to stifle 
 regret that Cardan's confused method and incoherent 
 system should have rendered his work comparatively 
 useless for the spread of true knowledge, and qualified it 
 only for a place among the labores ineptiarum. 
 
 Cardan begins with a definition of Subtilty. " By 
 subtilty I mean a certain faculty of the mind by which 
 certain phenomena, discernible by the senses and 
 comprehensible by the intellect, may be understood, 
 albeit with difficulty." Subtilty, as he understood it, 
 possesses a threefold character: substance, accident, and 
 manifestation. With regard to the senses he admits but 
 four to the first rank : touch, sight, smell, and hearing ; 
 the claims of taste, he affirms, are open to contention. 
 He then passes on to discuss the properties of matter: 
 fire, moisture, cold, dryness, and vacuum. The last- 
 named furnishes him with a text for a discourse on a 
 wonderful lamp which he invented by thinking out the 
 principle of the vacuum. This digression on the very 
 threshold of the work is a sample of what the reader 
 may expect to encounter all through the twenty-one 
 books of the De Subtilitate and the seventeen of the De 
 Varietate. Regardless of the claims of continuity, he 
 jumps from principle to practice without the slightest 
 warning. Intermingled with dissertations on abstract 
 causes and the hidden forces of Nature are to be found 
 descriptions of taps and pumps and syphons, and 
 | of the water-screw of Archimedes, the re-invention of 
 which caused poor Galeazzo Rosso, Fazio's blacksmith 
 
JEROME CARDAN 107 
 
 friend, to go mad for joy. There are diagrams of 
 furnaces, of machinery for raising sunken ships, and of 
 the common steelyard. Cardan finds no problem of 
 the universe too recondite to essay, and in like manner 
 he sets down information as to the most trivial details of 
 every-day economy : how to kill mice, why dogs bay 
 the moon, how to make vinegar, why a donkey is stupid, 
 why flint and steel produce fire, how to make the hands 
 white, how to tell good mushrooms from bad, and how 
 to mark household linen. He treats of the elements, 
 Earth, Air, and Water, excluding Fire, because it 
 produces nothing material ; of the heavens and light : 
 metals, stones, plants, and animals. Marvellous stories 
 abound, and the most whimsical theories are advanced 
 to account for the working of Nature. He tells how he 
 once saw a man from Porto Maurizio, pallid, with little 
 hair on his face, and fat in person, who had in his breasts 
 milk enough to suckle a child. He was a soldier, and 
 this strange property caused him no slight inconvenience. 
 Sages, he affirms, on account of their studious lives, are 
 little prone to sexual passion. With them the vital power 
 is carried from the heart to a region remote from the 
 genitals, i. e. to the brain, and for this reason such men as 
 a rule beget children weak and unlike themselves. Diet 
 has a valid effect on character, as the Germans, who 
 subsist chiefly on the milk of wild cows, are fierce and 
 bold and brutal. Again, the Corsicans, who eat young 
 dogs, wild as well as domestic, are notably fierce, cruel, 
 treacherous, fearless, nimble, and strong, following thus 
 the nature of dogs. He argues at length to show that 
 man is neither an animal nor a plant, but something 
 between the two. A man is no more an animal than 
 an animal is a plant. The animal has the anima sen- 
 sitiva which the plant lacks, and man transcends the 
 
io8 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 animal through the gift of the anima intellective/,, which, 
 as Aristotle testifies, differs from the sensitiva. Some 
 maintain that man and the animals must be alike in 
 nature and spirit, because it is possible for man to catch 
 certain diseases from animals. But animals take certain 
 properties from plants, and no one thinks of calling an 
 animal a plant. Man's nature is threefold : the Divine, 
 which neither deceives nor is deceived ; the Human, 
 which deceives, but is not deceived ; the Brutish, which 
 does not deceive, but is deceived. Dissertations on the 
 various sciences, the senses, the soul and intellect, things 
 marvellous, demons and angels, occupy the rest of the 
 chapters of the De Subtilitate. 
 
 At the end of the last book of De Varietate, Cardan 
 gives a table showing the books of the two works 
 arranged in parallel columns so as to exhibit the 
 relation they bear to each other. A comparison of the 
 treatment accorded to any particular branch of Natural 
 Philosophy in the De Subtilitate with that given in the 
 De Varietate, will show that in the last-named work 
 Cardan used his most discursive and anecdotic method. 
 l f j Mechanics are chiefly dealt with in the De Subtilitate, and 
 all through this treatise he set himself to observe in a 
 certain degree the laws of proportion, and kept more or 
 less to the point with which he was dealing, a system of 
 treatment which left him with a vast heap of materials 
 on his hands, even after he had built up the heavy tome 
 of the De Subtilitate. Perhaps when he began his 
 work upon the fresh volume he found this ingens acervus 
 too intractable and heterogeneous to be susceptible of 
 symmetrical arrangement, and was forced to let it 
 remain in confusion. Few men would sit down with a 
 light heart to frame a well-ordered treatise out of the 
 debris of a heap of note-books, and it would be unjust 
 
JEROME CARDAN 109 
 
 to censure Cardan's literary performance because he 
 failed in this task. Probably no other man living in his 
 day would have achieved a better result. It is certain 
 that he expended a vast amount of labour in attempting 
 to reduce his collected mass of facts even to the imper- 
 fect form it wears in the De Varietate Rerum}- 
 
 Considering that this book covers to a great extent 
 the same ground as its predecessor, Cardan must be 
 credited with considerable ingenuity of treatment in 
 presenting his supplementary work without an undue 
 amount of repetition. In the De Varietate\\t always con- 
 trives to bring forward some fresh fact or fancy to illus- 
 trate whatever section of the universe he may have under 
 treatment, even though this section may have been 
 already dealt with in the De Subtilitate. The charac- 
 teristic most strongly marked in the later book is the 
 increased eagerness with which he plunges into the 
 investigation of certain forces, which he professes to 
 appreciate as lying beyond Nature, and incapable of 
 scientific verification in the modern sense, and the fabled 
 manifestations of the same. He loses no opportunity 
 of trying to peer behind the curtain, and of seeking 
 honestly enough to formulate those various pseudo- 
 sciences, politely called occult, which have now fallen 
 into ridicule and disrepute with all except the charlatan 
 and the dupe, who are always with us. Where he 
 occupies in the De Subtilitate one page in considering 
 those things which lie outside Nature demons, ghosts, 
 
 1 " Sed nullus major labor quam libri de Rerum Varietate quern 
 cum saepius mutassem, demum traductis quibuscunque insignio- 
 ribus rebus in libros de Subtilitate, ita ilium exhausi, ut totus denuo 
 conscribendus fuerit atque ex integro restituendus." Opera, torn. 
 i. p. 74- 
 
 He seems to have utilized the services of Ludovico Ferrari in 
 compiling this work. Opera^ torn. i. p. 64. 
 
no JEROME CARDAN 
 
 incantations, succubi, incubi, divinations, and such like 
 he spends ten in the De Varietate over kindred 
 subjects. There is a wonderful story 1 told by his 
 father of a ghost or demon which he saw in his 
 youth while he was a scholar in the house of Giovanni 
 Resta at Pavia. He searches the pages of Hector 
 Boethius, Nicolaus Donis, Rugerus, Petrus Toletus, 
 Leo Africanus, and other chroniclers of the marvellous, 
 for tales of witchcraft, prodigies, and monstrous men 
 and beasts, and devotes a whole chapter to chiro- 
 mancy, 2 a subject with which he had occupied his 
 plenteous leisure when he was waiting for patients at 
 Sacco. The diagram of the human hand given by him 
 does not differ greatly from that of the contemporary 
 hand-books of the "Art," and the leading lines are 
 just the same. The heavenly bodies are as potent here 
 as in Horoscopy. The thumb is given to Mars, the 
 index finger to Jupiter, the middle finger to Saturn, the 
 ring finger to the Sun, and the little finger to Venus. 
 Each finger-joint has its name, the lowest being called 
 the procondyle, the middle the condyle, and the upper 
 the metacondyle. He passes briefly over as lines of 
 little import, the via combusta and the Cingulus 
 Orionis, but lays some stress on the character of the 
 nails and the knitting together of the hand, declaring 
 that hands which can be bent easily backward denote 
 effeminacy or a rapacious spirit. He teaches that lines 
 are most abundant in the hands of children, on account 
 of the tenderness of the skin, and of old men on account 
 of the dryness, a statement which might suggest the 
 theory that lines come into existence through the open- 
 ing and closing of the hand. But the adoption of this 
 view would have proved more disastrous to chiromancy 
 1 De Varietate, p. 66 1, 2 Book XV. ch. Ixxix. 
 
JEROME CARDAN in 
 
 than ridicule or serious criticism ; so he straightway 
 finds an explanation for this fact in the postulate 
 that lines in young people's hands speak as to the 
 future, and in old men's as to the past. Later he goes 
 on to affirm that lines in the hand cannot be treated as 
 mere wrinkles arising from the folding of the skin, 
 unless we are prepared to admit that wrinkled people 
 are more humorous than others, alluding no doubt to 
 the lines in the face caused by laughter, a proposition 
 which does not seem altogether convincing or conse- 
 quential, unless we also postulate that all humorous 
 men laugh at every joke. There is a line in the hand 
 which he calls the linea jecoraria, and the triangle 
 formed by this and the linea vita and the linea cerebri, 
 rules the disposition of the subject, due consideration 
 being given to the acuteness or obtuseness of the angles 
 of this triangle. Cardan seems to have based his 
 treatise on one written by a certain Ruffus Ephesius, 
 and it is without doubt one of the dullest portions of his 
 work. 1 
 
 It is almost certain that Cardan purposed to let the 
 De Varietate come forth from the press immediately 
 after the De Subtilitate, but before the MS. was ready, 
 it came to pass that he was called to make that memor- 
 able journey to Scotland in order to find a remedy 
 for the ailment which was troubling the Archbishop 
 of St. Andrews, a journey which has given to Britons 
 
 1 He gives one example of his skill as a palmist in the De Vita 
 Propria: "Memini me dum essem adolescens, persuasum fuisse 
 cuidam Joanni Stephano Biffo, quod essem Chiromanticus, et 
 tamen nil minus : rogat ille, ut praedicam ei aliquid de vita ; dixi 
 delusum esse a sociis, urget, veniam peto si quicquam gravius 
 praedixero : dixi periculum imminere brevi de suspendio, intra 
 hebdomadam capitur, admovetur tormentis : pertinaciter delictum 
 negat, nihilominus tandem post sex menses laqueo vitam finivit.' 
 ch. xlii. p. 156. 
 
ii2 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 a special interest in his life and work. In dealing with 
 the Cosmos in the De Subtilitate he had indeed made 
 brief mention of Britain ; but, writing then, he had no 
 personal relations with either England or Scotland, or 
 the people thereof; and, but for his subsequent visit, 
 he would not have been able to set down in the pages of 
 his second book so many interesting and suggestive 
 notes of what he had seen and heard, and his ideas of 
 the politics of the time. Again, if he had not been 
 urged by the desire all men feel to read what others 
 may have to say about places they have visited, it is not 
 likely that he would have searched the volumes of 
 Hector Boethius and other early writers for legends and 
 stories of our island. Writing of Britain 1 in the De 
 Subtilitate he had praised its delicate wool and its 
 freedom from poisonous beasts : a land where the wolf 
 had been exterminated, and where the sheep might 
 roam unvexed by any beast more formidable than the 
 fox. The inordinate breeding of rooks seems even in 
 those days 2 to have led to a war of extermination 
 against them, carried on upon a system akin to that 
 which was waged against the sparrow in the memory of 
 
 1 " Ergo nunc Britannia inclyta vellere est. Nee mirum cum 
 nullu animal venenatu mittat, imo nee infestum praeter vulpem, olim 
 et lupum : nunc vero exterminatis etiam lupis, tuto pecus vagat. 
 Rore cceli sitim sedant greges, ab omni alio potu arcentur, quod 
 aquae ibi ovibus sint exitiales : quia tamen in pabulo humido vermes 
 multi abundant, cornicu adeo multitude crevit, ut ob frugum damna 
 nuper publico consilio illas perdentibus proposita praemia sint : ubi 
 enim pabulum, ibi animalia sunt quas eo vescuntur, atque 
 immodice tune multiplicantur cum ubique abundaverit. Caret 
 tamen ut dixi, serpentibus, tribus ex causis : nam pauci possunt 
 generari ob frigus immensum." De Subtilitate, p. 298. 
 
 2 ^Eneas Sylvius in describing his visit to Britain a century 
 earlier says that rooks had been recently introduced, and that the 
 trees on which they roosted and built belonged to the King's 
 Exchequer. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 113 
 
 men yet living. But besides this one, he records, in the 
 De Subtilitate, few facts concerning Britain. He quotes 
 the instances of Duns Scotus and Suisset in support of 
 the view that the barbarians are equal to the Italians in f 
 intellect, 1 and he likewise notices the use of a fertilizing 
 earth presumably marl in agriculture, 2 and the lon- 
 gevity of the people, some of whom have reached their 
 hundred and twentieth year. 3 The first notice of us 
 in the De Varietate is in praise of our forestry, foras- 
 much as he remarked that the plane tree, which is 
 almost unknown in Italy through neglect, thrives well 
 in Scotland, he himself having seen specimens over 
 thirty feet high growing in the garden of the Augustinian 
 convent near Edinburgh. The lack of fruit in England 1 
 he attributes rather to the violence of the wind than to 
 the cold ; but, in spite of our cruel skies, he was able to 
 eat ripe plums in September, in a district close to the 
 Scottish border. He bewails the absence of olives and 
 nuts, and recommends the erection of garden-walls in 
 order to help on the cultivation of the more delicate fruits. 
 In a conversation with the Archbishop of St. An- 
 drews he was told that the King of Scots ruled over 
 one hundred and sixty-one islands, that the people of 
 the Shetland Islands lived for the most part on fish 
 prepared by freezing or sun-drying or fire, and had no 
 other wealth than the skins of beasts. Cardan pictures 
 
 1 " Ejusdem insulae accola fuit Joannes, tit dixi, Suisset [Richard 
 Swineshead] cognometo Calculator : in cujus solius unius argument! 
 solutione, quod contra experiment^ est de actione mutua tota labor- 
 avit posteritas ; quern senem admodum, nee inventa sua dum 
 legeret intelligentem, flevisse referunt. Ex quo baud dubium esse 
 reor, quod etiam in libro de animi immortalite scripsi, barbaros 
 ingenio nobis baud esse inferiores : quandoquidem sub Brumae caslo 
 divisa toto orbe Britannia duos tarn clari ingenii viros emiserit." 
 De Subtilitate, p. 444. 
 
 2 Ibid.) p. 142. 3 p. 369. 
 
 I 
 
ii 4 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 the Shetlanders of that time as leading an ideal life, 
 unvexed by discord, war, or ambition, labouring in the 
 summer for the needs of winter, worshipping Christ, 
 visited only once a year by a priest from Orkney, who 
 came over to baptize the children born within the last 
 twelve months, and was remunerated by a tenth of 
 the catch of fish. He speaks of the men of Orkney as 
 a very lively, robust, and open-hearted crew, furnished 
 with heads strong enough to defy drunkenness, even after 
 swallowing draughts of the most potent wine. The land 
 swarms with birds, and the sheep bring forth two or even 
 three lambs at a time. The horses are a mean breed, 
 and resemble asses both as to their size and their 
 patience. Some one told him of a fish, often seen round 
 about the islands, as big or even bigger than a horse, 
 with a hide of marvellous toughness, and useful for the 
 abundance of oil yielded by its carcase. He attributes 
 the bodily strength of these northerners to the absence 
 . of four deleterious influences drunkenness, care, heat, 
 and dry air. Cardan seems to have been astonished at 
 * the wealth of precious stones he found in Scotland 
 dark blue stones, diamonds, and carbuncles 1 "maxime 
 juxta academiam Glaguensis oppidi in Gludisdalia 
 regione," and he casts about to explain how it is that 
 England produces nothing of the kind, but only silver 
 and lead. He solves the question by laying down an 
 
 /' -/axiom that the harder the environment, the harder the 
 V 
 stone produced. The mountains of Scotland are both 
 
 higher and presumably harder than those of England, 
 hence the carbuncles. 
 
 1 The fame of Scots as judges of precious stones had spread to 
 Italy before Cardan's time. In the Novellino of Masuccio, which 
 was first printed in 1476, there is a passage in the tenth novel of the 
 first part, in which a rogue passes as " grandissimo cognoscitore " 
 of gems because he had spent much time in Scotland. 
 
JEROME- CARD AN 115 
 
 He was evidently fascinated with the wealth of local 
 legend and story which haunted the misty regions he 
 visited. In dealing with demons and familiar spirits he 
 cites the authority of Merlin, " whose fame is still great 
 in England," and tells a story of a young woman living 
 in the country of Mar. 1 This damsel was of noble family 
 and very fair in person, but she displayed a great 
 unwillingness to enter the marriage state. One day it 
 was discovered that she was pregnant, and when the 
 parents went to make inquisition for the seducer, the 
 girl confessed that, both by day and night, a young man 
 of surpassing beauty used to come and lie with her. 
 Who he was and whence he came she knew not. They, 
 though they gave little credit to her words, were informed 
 by her handmaid, some three days afterwards, that the 
 young man was once more with her ; wherefore, having 
 broken open the door, they entered, bearing lights and 
 torches, and beheld, lying in their daughter's arms, a 
 monster, fearsome and dreadful beyond human belief. 
 All the neighbours ran quickly to behold the grisly 
 sight, and amongst them a good priest, well acquainted 
 with pagan rites. When he had come anear, and had 
 said some verses of the Gospel of Saint John, the fiend 
 vanished with a terrible noise, bearing away the roof 
 of the chamber, and leaving the bed in flames. In three 
 days' time the girl gave birth to a monstrous child, more 
 hideous than anything heretofore seen in Scotland, 
 wherefore the nurses, to keep off disgrace from the 
 family, caused it to be burnt on a pile of wood. There 
 is another story of a youth living about fourteen miles 
 from Aberdeen, who was visited every night by a demon 
 lady of wonderful loveliness, though he bolted and locked 
 his chamber-door ; but by fasting and praying and keep- 
 1 De Varietate, p. 636. 
 
1 1 6 JEROME * CARDAN 
 
 ing his thoughts fixed on holy things he rid himself at 
 last of the unclean spirit. 1 He quotes from Boethius the 
 whole story of Macbeth, 2 and tells how " Duffus rex " 
 languished and wasted under the malefic arts of certain 
 witches who made an image of the king in wax and, by 
 using various incantations, let the same melt slowly 
 away before the fire. The unhappy king came near to 
 die, but, as soon as these nefarious practices were dis- 
 covered, the image was destroyed, whereupon the king 
 was restored to health. 3 
 
 When Cardan received the first letter from Scotland 
 the manuscript of the De Varietate must have been ready 
 or nearly ready for the printer ; but, for some reason or 
 other, he determined to postpone the publication of the 
 work until he should have finished with the Archbishop, 
 and took his manuscript with him when he set forth on 
 his travels. In 1 550 there came another break in Cardan's 
 life as Professor at Pavia, the reason being the usual one 
 of dearth of funds. 4 In 1551 he went back for a short 
 time, but the storms of war were rising on all sides, and 
 the luckless city of Pavia was in the very centre of the 
 disturbance. The French once more crossed the Alps, 
 pillaging and devastating the country, their ostensible 
 mission being the vindication of the rights of Ottavio 
 Farnese to the Duchy of Parma. Ottavio had quarrelled 
 with Pope Julius III., who called upon the Emperor for 
 assistance. War was declared, and Charles set to work 
 to annex Parma and Piacenza as well to the Milanese. 
 Cardan withdrew to Milan at the end of the year. Gian 
 Battista had now completed his medical course, so there 
 was now no reason why he should continue to live 
 
 1 De Varietate, p. 637. 2 Ibid., p. 637. 3 Ibid., p. 565. 
 4 " Peracto L anno quod stipendium non remuneraretur mansi 
 Mediolani." De Vita Propria, ch. iv. p. 15. 
 
 
JEROME CARDAN 117 
 
 permanently at Pavia. Moreover at this juncture he seems 
 to have been strongly moved to augment the fame which 
 he had already won in Mathematics and Medicine by 
 some great literary achievement, and he worked dili- 
 gently with this object in view. 1 
 
 At the beginning of November 1551, a letter came to 
 him from Cassanate, 2 a Franco-Spanish physician, who 
 was at that time in attendance upon the Archbishop of 
 St. Andrews, requesting him to make the journey to 
 Paris, and there to meet the Archbishop, who was 
 suffering from an affection of the lungs. The fame of 
 Cardan as a physician had spread as far as Scotland, 
 and the Archbishop had set his heart on consulting him. 
 Cassanate's letter is of prodigious length. After a diffuse 
 exordium he proceeds to praise in somewhat fulsome 
 terms the De Libris Propriis and the treatises De Sapi- 
 entia 3 and De Consolatione, which had been given to him 
 by a friend when he was studying at Toulouse in 1549. 
 He had just read the De Subtilitate, and was inflamed 
 with desire to become acquainted with everything which 
 Cardan had ever written. But what struck Cassanate 
 more than anything was a passage in the De Sapientia 
 on a medical question, which he extracts and incorpor- 
 ates in his epistle. Cardan writes there : " But if my pro- 
 fession itself will not give me a living, nor open out an 
 avenue to some other career, I must needs set my brains 
 to work, to find therein something unknown hitherto, for 
 the charm of novelty is unfailing, something which would 
 prove of the highest utility in a particular case. In Milan, 
 
 1 About this time he wrote the Liber Decent Problematum, and 
 the treatise Delle Burle Calde, one of his few works written in 
 Italian. Opera, torn. i. p. 109. 
 
 2 Cassanate's letter is given in full (Opera, torn. i. p. 89). 
 
 3 The quotation from the De Sapientia differs somewhat from the 
 original passage which stands on p. 578 of the same volume. 
 
n8 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 while I was fighting the battle against hostile prejudice, 
 and was unable to earn enough to pay my way (so 
 much harder is the lot of manifest than of hidden merit, 
 and no man is honoured as a prophet in his own 
 country), I brought to light much fresh knowledge, 
 and worked my hardest at my art, for outside my art 
 there was naught to be done. At last I discovered a cure 
 for phthisis, which is also known as Phthce, a disease for 
 many centuries deemed incurable, and I healed many who 
 //. are alive to this day as easily as I have cured the Galli- 
 cus morbus. I also discovered a cure for intercutaneous 
 water in many who still survive. But in the matter of 
 invention, Reason will be the leader, but Experiment 
 the Master, the stimulating cause of work in others. 
 If in any experiment there should seem to be an 
 element of danger, let it be performed gently, and little 
 by little." J It is not wonderful that the Archbishop, 
 who doubtless heard all about Cardan's asserted cure of 
 phthisis from Cassanate, should have been eager to 
 submit his asthma to Cardan's skill. After acknow- 
 ledging the deep debt of gratitude which he, in common 
 with the whole human race, owed to Cardan in respect 
 to the two discoveries aforesaid, Cassanate comes to the 
 business in hand, to wit, the Archbishop's asthma. Not 
 content with giving a most minute description of the 
 symptoms, he furnishes Cardan also with a theory of the 
 operations of the distemper. He writes : " The disease at 
 first took the form of a distillation from the brain into 
 the lungs, accompanied with hoarseness, which, with the 
 help of the physician in attendance, was cured for a time, 
 but the temperature of the brain continued unfavourable, 
 being too cold and too moist, so that certain unhealthy 
 humours were collected in the head and there remained, 
 1 Opera,) torn. i. p, 89. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 119 
 
 because the brain could neither assimilate its own 
 nutriment, nor disperse the humours which arose from 
 below, being weakened through its nutriment of pitui- 
 tous blood. After an attack of this nature it always 
 happened that, whenever the body was filled with any 
 particular matter, which, in the form of substance, or 
 vapour, or quality, might invade the brain, a fresh 
 attack would certainly arise, in the form of a fresh flow 
 of the same humour down to the lungs. Moreover these 
 attacks were found to agree almost exactly with the 
 conjunctions and oppositions of the moon." 1 
 
 Cassanate goes on to say that his patient had proved 
 somewhat intractable, refusing occasionally to have 
 anything to do with his medical attendants, and that 
 real danger was impending owing to the flow of humour 
 having become chronic. Fortunately this humour was 
 not acrid or salt ; if it were, phthisis must at once 
 supervene. But the Archbishop's lungs were becoming 
 more and more clogged with phlegm, and a stronger 
 effort of coughing was necessary to clear them. 
 Latterly much of the thick phlegm had adhered to 
 the lungs, and consequently the difficulty of breathing 
 was great. Cassanate declares that he had been able 
 to do no more than to keep the Archbishop alive, and 
 he fears no one would be able to work a complete cure, 
 seeing that the air of Scotland is so moist and salt, and 
 that the Archbishop is almost worried to death by the 
 affairs of State. He next urges Cardan to consent to 
 meet the Archbishop in Paris, a city in which learning 
 of all sorts flourishes exceedingly, the nurse of many 
 great philosophers, and one in which Cardan would 
 assuredly meet the honour and reverence which is his 
 
 1 In a subsequent interview with Cardan, Cassanate modifies 
 this statement. Opera, torn. ix. p. 124. 
 
120 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 due. The Archbishop's offer was indeed magnificent in 
 its terms. Funds would be provided generous enough 
 to allow the physician to travel post the whole of the 
 journey, and the goodwill of all the rulers of the states 
 en route would be enlisted in his favour. Cassanate 
 finishes by fixing the end of January 1552 as a con- 
 venient date for the rendezvous in Paris, and, as time 
 and place accorded with Cardan's wishes, he wrote to 
 Cassanate accepting the offer. 
 
 The Archbishop of St. Andrews was John Hamilton, 
 the illegitimate brother of James, Earl of Arran, who had 
 been chosen Regent of the kingdom after the death of 
 James V. at Flodden, and the bar sinister, in this case 
 as in many others, was the ensign of a courage and 
 talent and resource in which the lawful offspring was 
 conspicuously wanting. Any student taking a cursory 
 glance at the epoch of violence and complicated intrigue 
 which marked the infancy of Mary of Scotland, may 
 well be astonished that a man so weak and vain and 
 incompetent as James Hamilton albeit his footing was 
 made more secure by his position as the Queen's heir- 
 presumptive should have held possession of his high 
 dignities so long as he did. Alternately the tool of 
 France and of England, he would one day cause his 
 great rival Cardinal Beatoun to be proclaimed an enemy 
 of his country, and the next would meet him amicably 
 and adopt his policy. After becoming the partisan of 
 Henry VIII. and the foe of Rome, he finally put the 
 coping-stone to his inconsistencies by becoming a con- 
 vert to Catholicism in 1543. But in spite of his 
 indolence and weakness, he was still Regent of Scotland, 
 when his brother, the Archbishop, was seized with that 
 attack of periodic asthma which threatened to change 
 vitally the course of Scottish politics. A very slight 
 
JEROME CARDAN 121 
 
 study of contemporary records will show that Arran had 
 been largely, if not entirely, indebted to the distinguished 
 talents and to the ambition of his brother for his con- 
 tinued tenure of the chief power of the State. If 
 confirmation of this view be needed, it will be found 
 in the fact that, as soon as the Archbishop was confined 
 to a sick-room, Mary of Guise, the Queen Mother, 
 supported by her brothers in France and by the 
 Catholic party at home, began to undermine the 
 Regent's position by intrigue, and ultimately, partly by 
 coaxing, partly by threats, won from him a promise to 
 surrender his power into her hands. 
 
 In the meantime Cardan was waiting for further 
 intelligence and directions as to his journey. The end 
 of January had been fixed as the date of the meeting at 
 Paris, and it was not until the middle of February that 
 any further tidings came to him. Then he received a 
 letter from Cassanate and a remittance to cover the 
 expenses of his journey. 1 He set out at once on 
 February 22, undaunted by the prospect of a winter 
 crossing of the Simplon, and, having travelled by way of 
 Sion and Geneva, arrived at Lyons on March 13. In 
 Cassanate's first letter Paris had been named as the 
 place of meeting ; but, as a concession to Cardan's 
 convenience, Lyons was added as an alternative, in case 
 he should find it impossible to spare time for a longer 
 journey. Cardan accordingly halted at Lyons, but 
 neither Archbishop nor physician was there to meet him. 
 After he had waited for more than a month, Cassanate 
 appeared alone, and brought with him a heavy purse 
 of money for the cost of the long journey to Scotland, 
 which he now begged Cardan to undertake, and a letter 
 
 1 "Accepique antequam discederem aureos coronatos Galileos 
 500 et M.C.C. in reditu." De Vita Propria, ch. iv. p. 16. 
 
122 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 from the Archbishop himself, who wrote word that, though 
 he had fully determined in the first instance to repair to 
 Paris, or even to Lyons, to meet Cardan, he found him- 
 self at present mastered by the turn of circumstances, 
 and compelled to stay at home. He promised Cardan 
 a generous reward, and a reception of a nature to 
 convince him that the Scots are not such Scythians as 
 they might perchance be deemed in Milan. 1 Cardan's 
 temper was evidently upset by this turn of affairs, and 
 his suspicions aroused ; for he sets down his belief that 
 patient and physician had from the first worked with 
 the intention of dragging him all the way to Scotland, 
 but that they had waited till he was across the Alps 
 before showing their hand, fearing lest if the word 
 Scotland should have been used at the outset, he would 
 never have moved from Milan. 2 In describing his 
 journey he writes: "I tarried in Lyons forty-six days, 
 seeing nothing of the Archbishop, nor of the physician 
 whom I expected, nevertheless I gained more than I 
 spent. I met there Ludovico Birago, a gentleman of 
 Milan, and commander of the King's foot-soldiers, and 
 with him I contracted a close friendship, so much so 
 that, had I been minded to take service under Brissac, the 
 King's lieutenant, I might have enjoyed a salary of one 
 thousand crowns a year. Shortly afterwards Guglielmo 
 Cassanate, the Archbishop's physician, arrived in Lyons 
 and brought with him three hundred other golden 
 crowns, which he handed to me, in order that I might 
 make the journey with him to Scotland, offering in 
 addition to pay the cost of travel, and promising me 
 divers gifts in addition. Thus, making part of our 
 
 1 " Difficillimis causis victus venire non potui." The Archbishop's 
 letter is given in Opera, torn. i. p. 137. 
 
 2 Geniturarum Exempla, p. 469. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 123 
 
 journey down the Loire, I arrived at Paris. While I 
 was there I met Orontius ; but he for some reason or 
 other refused to visit me. Under the escort of Magni- 
 enus l I inspected the treasury of the French Kings, and 
 the Church of Saint Denis. I saw likewise something 
 there, not so famous, but more interesting to my mind, 
 and this was the horn of a unicorn, whole and uninjured. 
 After this we met the King's physicians, and we all 
 dined together, but I declined to hold forth to them 
 during dinner, because before we sat down they were 
 urgent that I should begin a discussion. I next set 
 forth on my journey, my relations with Pharnelius and 
 Silvius, and another of the King's physicians, 2 whom I 
 left behind, being of a most friendly nature, and 
 travelled to Boulogne in France, where, by the command 
 of the Governor of Sarepont, an escort of fourteen armed 
 horsemen and twenty foot-soldiers was assigned to me, 
 and so to Calais. I saw the tower of Caesar still stand- 
 ing. Then having crossed the narrow sea I went to 
 London, and at last met the Archbishop at Edinburgh 
 
 1 He mentions this personage in De Varietate, p. 672: "Johannes 
 Manienus medicus, vir egregius et mathematicaram studiosus." He 
 was physician to the monks of Saint Denis. 
 
 2 The reception given to Cardan in Paris was a very friendly one. 
 Orontius was a mechanician and mathematician ; and jealousy of 
 Cardan's great repute may have kept him away from the dinner, 
 but the physicians were most hospitable. Pharnelius [Fernel] was 
 Professor of Medicine at the University, and physician to the Court. 
 Sylvius was an old man of a jocular nature, but as an anatomist bitterly 
 opposed to the novel methods of Vesalius, who was one of Cardan's 
 heroes. With this possibility of quarrelling over the merits of 
 Vesalius, it speaks well for the temper of the doctors that they 
 parted on good terms. Ranconet, another Parisian who welcomed 
 Cardan heartily, was one of the Presidents of the Parliament of 
 Paris. He seems to have been a man of worth and distinguished 
 attainments, and Cardan gives an interesting account of him in 
 Geniturarum Exempla^ p. 423. 
 
i2 4 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 on the twenty-ninth of June. I remained there till the 
 thirteenth of September. I received as a reward four 
 hundred more gold crowns ; a chain of gold worth a 
 hundred and twenty crowns, a noble horse, and many 
 other gifts, in order that no one of those who were 
 with me should return empty-handed." l 
 
 The Archbishop's illness might in itself have supplied 
 a reason for his inability to travel abroad and meet 
 Cardan as he had agreed to do ; but the real cause of 
 his change of plan was doubtless the condition of public 
 affairs in Scotland at the beginning of 1552. In the 
 interval of time between Cassanate's first letter to 
 Cardan and the end of 1551, the Regent had half 
 promised to surrender his office into the hands of the 
 Guise party in Scotland, wherefore it was no wonder 
 that the Primate, recognizing how grave was the danger 
 which threatened the source of his power, should have 
 resolved that, sick or sound, his proper place was at the 
 Scottish Court. 
 
 1 De Vita Propria, ch. xxix. p. 75. Cardan refers more than 
 once to the generosity of the Archbishop. He computes (Opera, 
 torn. i. p. 93) that his visit must have cost Hamilton four talents 
 of gold ; that is to say, two thousand golden crowns. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 CARDAN, as he has himself related, arrived at Edin- 
 burgh on June 29, 1552. The coming of such a man 
 at such a time must have been an event of extraordinary 
 interest. In England the Italy of the Renaissance had 
 been in a measure realized by men of learning and 
 intellect through the reports of the numerous scholars 
 John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, Henry Parker, 
 Lord Morley, Howard Earl of Surrey, and Sir Thomas 
 Wyat, may be taken as examples who had wandered 
 thither and come back with a stock of histories setting 
 forth the beauty and charm, and also the terror and 
 wickedness, of that wonderful land. Some echoes of 
 this legend had doubtless drifted down to Scotland, and 
 possibly still more may have been wafted over from 
 France. Ascham had taken up his parable in the 
 Schoolmaster \ describing the devilish sins and corruptions 
 of Italy, and now the good people of Edinburgh were to 
 be given the sight of a man coming thence, one who 
 was fabled to have gathered together more knowledge, 
 both of this world and of that other hidden one which 
 was to them just as real, than any mortal man alive. 
 Under these circumstances it is not surprising that 
 Cardan should have been regarded rather as a magician 
 than as a doctor, and in the Scotichronicon * it is recorded 
 
 1 Scotichronicon^ vol. i. p. 286 [ed. G. F. S. Gordon, Glasgow, 
 1867]. Naudd, in his Apologie pour les grands hommes soup^onnez 
 
 125 
 
126 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 that the Primate was cured of a lingering asthma by the 
 incantations of an astrologer named Cardan, from Milan. 
 Cardan in his narrative speaks of Edinburgh as the 
 place where he met his patient, and does not mention 
 any other place of sojourn, but the record just quoted 
 goes on to say that he abode with the Primate for eleven 
 weeks at his country residence at Monimail, near Cupar, 
 Fife, where there is a well called to this day Cardan's 
 Well. 
 
 Cardan, as it has been noticed already, refused to 
 commit himself to any opinion as to the character of 
 the Archbishop's distemper over the dinner-table where 
 he and Cassanate had been entertained by the French 
 King's physicians. Cassanate had set forth his views 
 in full as to the nature of the asthma which had to be 
 dealt with in his letter to Cardan, and it is highly pro- 
 bable that he would again bring forward these views in 
 the hearing of the Paris doctors. It is certain that some 
 of the French physicians had, previous to this, prescribed 
 a course of treatment for the Archbishop, probably 
 without seeing him, and that the course was being tried 
 when Cardan arrived in Edinburgh. 1 For the first six 
 weeks of his stay he watched the case, and let the treat- 
 ment aforesaid go on whether it differed from that which 
 Cassanate recommended or not there is no evidence to 
 show. But no good result came of it. The Archbishop 
 wasted in body and became fretful and disturbed in 
 
 de Magie, writes : " Ceux qui recherchoiant les Mathematiques et 
 les Sciences les moins communes dtoient soupgonnez d'etre enchan- 
 teurs et Magiciens." p. 15. 
 
 1 " Curam agebat Medicus ex constitute Medicorum Lutetian- 
 orum." De Vita Propria, ch. xl. p. 137. Cardan makes no direct 
 mention of any other physician in Scotland besides Cassanate ; but 
 the Archbishop would certainly have a body physician in attend- 
 ance during Cassanate's absence. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 127 
 
 mind, and, at last, Cardan was obliged to let his opinion 
 of the case be known ; and, as this was entirely hostile 
 to the treatment which was being pursued, the inevit- 
 able quarrel between the doctors burst forth with great 
 violence. The Archbishop was irate with his ordinary 
 medical attendant, probably the physician who was 
 left in charge during Cassanate's absence and this man 
 retaliated upon Cardan for having thus stirred up strife. 
 Cardan's position was certainly a very uneasy one. The 
 other physicians were full of jealousy and malice, and 
 the Archbishop began to accuse him of dilatory conduct 
 of the case, redoubling his complaints as soon as he 
 found himself getting better under the altered treatment. 
 So weary did Cardan become of this bickering that he 
 begged leave to depart at once, but this proposition the 
 Primate took in very ill part. 
 
 Cassanate in his first diagnosis had traced the Arch- 
 bishop's illness to an excess of coldness and humidity 
 in the brain. Now Cardan, on the other hand, main- / 
 tained that the brain was too hot. He found Cassa- 
 nate's treatment too closely fettered by his theory as to 
 the causes of periodic asthma, but he did not venture 
 to exhibit his own course of treatment till after he had 
 gained some knowledge of the Archbishop's temper and 
 habits. He came to the conclusion that his patient was 
 overwrought with the cares of State, that he ate too 
 freely, that he did not sleep enough, and that he was of 
 a temper somewhat choleric. Cardan set forth this view 
 of the case in a voluminous document, founding the 
 course of treatment he proposed to pursue upon the 7 
 aphorisms of Galen. He altogether rejected Cassanate's C 
 view as to the retention of the noxious humours in the 
 head. The Archbishop had the ruddy complexion of a 
 man in good health, a condition which could scarcely 
 
128 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 co-exist with the loading of the brain with matter which 
 would certainly putrify if retained for any long time. 
 Cardan maintained that the serous humour descended 
 into the lungs, not by the passages, but by soaking 
 through the membranes as through linen. 1 After 
 describing the origin and the mode of descent of this 
 humour, he goes on to search for an auxiliary cause of 
 the mischief, and this he finds in the imperfect digestive 
 powers of the stomach and liver. If the cause lay 
 entirely in the brain, how was it that all the cerebral 
 functions were not vitiated ? In fine, the source of the 
 disease lay, not in the weakness of the brain, but in an 
 access of heat, caused possibly by exposure to the sun, 
 by which the matter of the brain had become so rarefied 
 that it showed unhealthy activity in absorbing moisture 
 from the other parts. This heat, therefore, must be 
 reduced. 
 
 To accomplish this end three lines of treatment must 
 be followed. First, a proper course of diet ; second, 
 drugs ; and third, certain manual operations. As to 
 diet, the Archbishop was ordered to take nothing but 
 light and cooling food, two to four pints of asses' milk 
 in the early morning, drawn from an ass fed on cooling 
 herbs, and to use all such foods as had a fattening 
 tendency ; tortoise or turtle-soup, 2 distilled snails, barley- 
 water and chicken-broth, and divers other rich edibles. 
 The purging of the brain was a serious business ; it was 
 to be compassed by an application to the coronal suture 
 of an ointment made of Greek pitch, ship's tar, white 
 mustard, euphorbium, and honey of anathardus : the 
 
 1 "Per totam tunicam sicut in linteis." Opera, torn. ix. p. 128. 
 
 2 " Accipe testudinem maximam et illam incoque in aqua, donee 
 dissolvatur, deinde abjectis corticibus accipiantur caro, et ossa et 
 viscera omnia mundata." Opera, torn. ix. p. 140. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 129 
 
 compound to be sharpened, if necessary, by the addition 
 of blister fly, or rendered less searching by leaving out 
 the euphorbium and mustard. Cardan adds, that, by 
 the use of this persuasive application, he had sometimes 
 brought out two pints of water in twenty-four hours. 
 The use of the shower-bath and plentiful rubbing with 
 dry cloths was also recommended. 
 
 The purging of the body was largely a question of 
 diet. To prevent generation of moisture, perfumes 
 were to be used ; the patient was to sleep on raw silk 
 and not upon feathers, and to let an hour and a half 
 come between supper and bed-time. Sleep, after all, 
 was the great thing to be sought. The Archbishop was 
 counselled to sleep from seven to ten hours, and to 
 subtract time from his studies and his business and 
 add the same to sleep. 1 
 
 Cardan's treatment, which seems to have been sug- 
 gested as much by the man of common-sense as by the 
 physician, soon began to tell favourably upon the Arch- 
 bishop. He remained for thirty-five days in charge of 
 his patient, during which time the distemper lost its 
 virulence and the patient gained flesh. In the mean- 
 time the fame of his skill had spread abroad, and well- 
 nigh the whole nobility of Scotland flocked to consult 
 him, 2 and they paid him so liberally that on one day he 
 made nineteen golden crowns. But when winter began 
 to draw near, Cardan felt that it was time to move 
 
 1 Another piece of advice runs as follows : " De venere certe non 
 est bona, neque utilis, ubi tamen contingat necessitas, debet uti ea 
 inter duos somnos, scilicet post mediam noctem, et melius est-exer- 
 cere earn ter in sex diebus pro exemplo ut singulis duobus diebus 
 semel, quam bis in una die, etiam quod staret per decem dies." 
 Opera, torn. ix. p. 135. 
 
 2 " Interim autem concurrebant multi, imo pene* tota nobilitas." 
 Opera, torn. 1. p. 93. 
 
 K 
 
1 3 o JEROME CARDAN 
 
 southward. He feared the cold ; he longed to get back 
 to his sons, and he was greatly troubled by the continued 
 ill-behaviour of one of the servants he had brought with 
 him "maledicus, invidus, avarissimus, Dei contemptor;" 
 but he found his patient very loth to let him depart. 
 The Archbishop declared that his illness was alleviated 
 but not cured, and only gave way unwillingly when 
 Cardan brought forward arguments to show what dangers 
 and inconveniences he would incur through a longer stay. 
 Cardan had originally settled to return by way of Paris, 
 but letters which he received from his young kinsman, 
 Gasparo Cardano, and from Ranconet, led him to 
 change his plans. The country was in a state of 
 anarchy, the roads being infested with thieves, and 
 Gasparo himself had the bad fortune to be taken by 
 a gang of ruffians. In consequence of these things 
 Cardan determined to return by way of Flanders and 
 the Empire. 
 
 It was not in reason that Cardan would quit Scotland 
 and resign the care of his patient without taking the 
 stars into his counsel as to the future. He cast the 
 Archbishop's horoscope, and published it in the Genitu- 
 rarum Exempla. It was not a successful feat. In his 
 forty-eighth year, i.e. in 1560, the astrologer declared 
 that Hamilton would be in danger of poison and of 
 suffering from an affection of the heart. But the time 
 of- the greatest peril seemed to lie between July 30 
 and September 21, 1554. The stars gave no warning 
 of the tragic fate which befell Archbishop Hamilton 
 in the not very distant future. For the succeeding six 
 years he governed the Church in Scotland with prudence 
 and leniency, but in 1558 he began a persecution of the 
 reformers which kindled a religious strife, highly embar- 
 rassing to the Catholic party then holding the reins of 
 
JEROME CARDAN 131 
 
 power. His cruelties were borne in mind by the re- 
 formers when they got the upper hand. In 1563 he 
 was imprisoned for saying mass. In 1568 Mary, after 
 her escape from Loch Leven, gave the chief direction of 
 her affairs into the hands of the Archbishop, who was 
 the bitter foe of the Regent Murray. Murray having 
 defeated the Queen's forces at Langside, Hamilton took 
 refuge in Dumbarton Castle, which was surprised and 
 captured in 1571, when the Archbishop was taken to 
 Stirling and hanged. In the words of the Diurnal of 
 Occurrants : " as the bell struck six hours at even, he 
 was hangit at the mercat cross of Stirling upon a 
 jebat." * His enemies would not let him rest even 
 there, for the next day, fixed to the tree, were found the 
 following verses : 
 
 " Cresce diu, felix arbor, semperque vireto 
 Frondibus ut nobis talia poma feras." 
 
 To return to Cardan. Having at last won from his 
 patient leave to depart, he set forth laden with rich gifts. 
 In Scotland, Cardan found the most generous pay- 
 masters he had ever met. In recording the niggard 
 treatment which he subsequently experienced at the 
 hands of Brissac, the French Viceroy, he contrasts it 
 with the liberal rewards granted to him in what must 
 then have been the poorest of the European kingdoms ; 2 
 and in the Preface of the De Astrorum Judiciis (Basel, 
 
 1 Scotichronicon, vol. i. p. 234. Larrey in his History of England 
 seems to have given currency to the legend that Cardan foretold 
 the Archbishop's death. " S'il en faut croire ce que 1'Histoire nous 
 dit de ce fameux Astrologe, il donna une terrible preuve de sa science 
 a 1'Archeveque qu'il avoit gueri, lorsque prenait conge* de lire, il lui 
 tint ce discours : ' Qu'il avoit bien pu le guerir de sa maladie ; mais 
 qu'il n'dtoit pas en son pouvoir de changer sa destine'e, ni d'empe"cher 
 qu'il ne fut pendu.'" Larrey, Hist. d^Angleterre^\Q\. ii. p. 711. 
 
 2 De Vita Propria, ch. xxxii. p. 101. 
 
i 3 2 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 1554) he writes in sympathetic and grateful terms of the 
 kind usage he had met in the North. 1 It must have 
 been a severe disappointment to him that he was unable 
 to revisit Paris on his way home, for letters from his 
 friend Ranconet told him that a great number of 
 illustrious men had proposed to repair to Paris for 
 the sake of meeting him ; and many of the nobles of 
 France were anxious to consult him professionally, one 
 of them offering a fee of a thousand gold crowns. But 
 Cardan was so terrified by the report given by Gasparo 
 of the state of France, that he made up his mind he 
 would on no account touch its frontiers on his homeward 
 journey. 
 
 Before he quitted Scotland there had come to him 
 letters from the English Court entreating him to tarry 
 there some days on his way home to Italy, and give his 
 opinion on the health of Edward VI., who was then 
 slowly recovering from an attack of smallpox and 
 measles. The young King's recovery was more apparent 
 than real, for he was, in fact, slowly sinking under the 
 constitutional derangement which killed him a few 
 months later. Cardan could hardly refuse to comply 
 with this request, nor is there any evidence to show that 
 he made this visit to London unwillingly. But he soon 
 found out that those about the Court were anxious to 
 hear from him something more than a statement of his 
 opinion as to Edward's health. They wanted, before all 
 else, to learn what the stars had to say as to the probable 
 duration of the sovereign's life. During his stay in 
 Scotland Cardan would certainly have gained some 
 
 1 " Scoticu nomen antea horruera, eorum exemplo qui prius coe- 
 perunt odisse quam cognoscere. Nunc cum ipsa gens per se human- 
 issima sit atque supra existimationem civilis, tu tamen tantum illi 
 addis ornamenti, ut longe nomine tuo jam nobilior evadat." De 
 Astrorum Judiciis, p. 3. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 133 
 
 intelligence of the existing state of affairs at the English 
 Court ; how in the struggle for the custody of the regal 
 power, the Lord High Admiral and the Lord Protector, 
 the King's uncles, had lost their heads ; and how the 
 Duke of Northumberland, the son of Dudley, the in- 
 famous minion of Henry VII. and the destroyer of the 
 ill-fated Seymours, had now gathered all the powers 
 and dignities of the kingdom into his own hands, and 
 was waiting impatiently for the death of Edward, an 
 event which would enable him to control yet more 
 completely the supreme power, through the puppet 
 queen whom he had ready at hand to place upon the 
 throne. An Italian of the sixteenth century, steeped in 
 the traditions of the bloody and insidious state-craft of 
 Milan and the Lombard cities, Cardan would naturally 
 shrink from committing himself to any such perilous 
 utterance: all the more for the reason that he had already 
 formed an estimate of the English as a fierce and cruel 
 people. With his character as a magician to maintain 
 he could scarcely keep entire silence, so he wrote down 
 for the satisfaction of his interrogators a horoscope : a 
 mere perfunctory piece of work, as we learn afterwards. 
 He begins by reciting the extraordinary nature of 
 the King's birth, repeating the legend that his mother 
 was delivered of him by surgical aid, and only lived a 
 few hours afterwards ; and declares that, in his opinion, 
 it would have been better had this boy never been born 
 at all. " Nevertheless, seeing that he had come into this 
 world and been duly trained and educated, it would be 
 well for mankind were he to live long, for all the graces 
 waited upon him. Boy as he was, he was skilled in 
 divers tongues, Latin, English, and French, and not 
 unversed in Greek, Italian, and Spanish ; he had like- 
 wise knowledge of dialectics, natural philosophy, and 
 
i 34 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 music. His culture is the reflection of our mortal 
 nature; his gravity that of kingly majesty, and his 
 disposition is worthy of so illustrious a prince. Speak- 
 ing generally, it was indeed a strange experience to 
 realize that this boy of so great talent and promise 
 was being educated in the knowledge of the affairs of 
 men. I have not set forth his accomplishments, tricked 
 out with rhetoric so as to exceed the truth ; of which, in 
 sooth, my relation falls short." Cardan next draws a 
 figure of Edward's horoscope, and devotes several pages 
 to the customary jargon of astrologers ; and, under the 
 heading "De animi qualitatibus," says: "There was some- 
 thing portentous about this boy. He had learnt, as I 
 heard, seven languages, and certainly he knew thoroughly 
 his own, French, and Latin. He was skilled in Dialectic, 
 and eager to be instructed in all subjects. When I met 
 him, he was in his fifteenth year, and he asked me 
 (speaking Latin no less perfectly and fluently than 
 myself), 'What is contained in those rare books of 
 yours, De rerum varietate ? ' for I had dedicated these 
 manuscripts to his name. 1 Whereupon I began by 
 pointing out to him what I had written in the opening 
 chapter on the cause of the comets which others had 
 sought so long in vain. He was curious to hear more 
 of this cause, so I went on to tell him that it was the 
 collected light of the wandering stars. 'Then/ said 
 he, ' how is it, since the stars are set going by various 
 impulses, that this light is not scattered, or carried along 
 with the stars in their courses ? ' I replied : ' It does 
 indeed move with them, but at a speed vastly greater on 
 account of the difference of our point of view; as, for 
 
 1 Cardan evidently carried the MS. with him, for he writes 
 (Opera, torn. i. p. 72) : " Hoc fuit quod Regi Anglias Edoardo sexto 
 admodum adolescent! dum redirem a Scotia ostendi." 
 
JEROME CARDAN 135 
 
 instance, when the prism is cast upon the wall by the 
 sun and the crystal, then the least motion of the crystal 
 will shift the position of the reflection to a great distance/ 
 The King said : * But how can this be done when no 
 subjectum is provided ? for in the case you quote the wall 
 is the subjectum to the reflection/ I replied : ' It is a 
 similar effect to that which we observe in the Milky 
 Way, and in the reflection of light when many candles 
 are lighted in a mass ; these always produce a certain 
 clear and lucent medium. Itaque ex ungue leonem! 
 
 " This youth was the great hope of good and learned 
 men everywhere, by reason of his frankness and the 
 gentleness of his manners. He began to take an interest 
 in the Arts before he understood them, and to understand 
 them before he had full occasion to use them. The pro- 
 duction of such a personality was an effort of humanity; 
 and, should he be snatched away before his time, not 
 only England, but all the world must mourn his loss. 
 
 "When he was required to show the gravity of a 
 king, he would appear to be an old man, He played 
 upon the lyre; he took interest in public affairs ; and was 
 of a kingly mind, following thus the example of his 
 father, who, while he was over-careful to do right, managed 
 to exhibit himself to the world in an evil light. But the 
 son was free from any suspicion of such a charge, and 
 his intelligence was brought to maturity by the study of 
 philosophy." 
 
 Cardan next makes an attempt to gauge the duration 
 of the King's life, and when it is considered that he was 
 a skilled physician, and Edward a sickly boy, fast sinking 
 into a decline, it is to be feared that he let sincerity give 
 way to prudence when he proclaimed that, in his fifty- 
 sixth year the King would be troubled with divers ill- 
 nesses. " Speaking generally of the whole duration of 
 
136 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 his life he will be found to be steadfast, firm, severe, 
 chaste, intelligent, an observer of righteousness, patient 
 under trouble, mindful both of injuries and benefits, one 
 demanding reverence and seeking his own. He would 
 lust as a man, but would suffer the curse of impotence. 
 He would be wise beyond measure, and thereby win the 
 admiration of the world ; very prudent and high-minded ; 
 fortunate, and indeed a second Solomon." 
 
 Edward VI. died on July 6, 1553, about six months 
 after Cardan had returned to Milan ; and, before the 
 publication of the Geniturarum Exempla in 1554, the 
 author added to the King's horoscope a supplementary 
 note, explaining his conduct thereanent and shedding 
 some light upon the tortuous and sinister intrigues which 
 at that time engaged the ingenuity of the leaders about 
 the English Court. Now that he was safe from the 
 consequences of giving offence, he wrote in terms much 
 less guarded as to the state of English affairs. It must 
 be admitted that his calculations as to the King's length 
 of days, published after death, have no special value as 
 calculations ; but his impressions of the probable drift of 
 events in England are interesting as the view of a 
 foreigner upon English politics, and moreover they 
 exhibit in strong light the sinister designs of Northumber- 
 land. Cardan records his belief that, in the fourth month 
 of his fifteenth year, the King had been in peril of his life 
 from the plottings of those immediately about him. On 
 one occasion a particular disposition of the sun and 
 Mars denoted that he was in danger of plots woven by 
 a wicked minister, nay, there were threatenings even of 
 poison. 1 He does not shrink from affirming that this 
 unfortunate boy met his death by the treachery of those 
 
 1 " Cumque ibi esset nodus etia venenum, quod utina abfuerit." 
 Geniturarum Exempla, p. 411. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 137 
 
 about him. As an apology for the horoscope he drew 
 when he was m England, he lays down the principle 
 that it is inexpedient to give opinions as to the duration 
 of life in dealing with the horoscopes of those in feeble 
 health, unless you shall beforehand consult all the 
 directions and processes and ingresses of the ruling 
 planets, " and if I had not made this reservation in the 
 prognostic I gave to the English courtiers, they might 
 justly have found fault with me." 
 
 He next remarks that he had spent much time in 
 framing this horoscope albeit it was imperfect accord- 
 ing to his usual practice, and that if he had gone on 
 somewhat farther, and consulted the direction of the sun 
 and moon, the danger of death in which the King stood 
 would straightway have manifested itself. If he had 
 still been distrustful as to the directions aforesaid, and 
 had gone on to observe the processes and ingresses, the 
 danger would have been made clear, but even then 
 he would not have dared to predict an early death 
 to one in such high position : he feared the treacheries 
 and tumults and the transfer of power which must 
 ensue, and drew a picture of all the evils which might 
 befall himself, evils which he was in no mood to face. 
 Where should he look for protection amongst a strange 
 people, who had little mercy upon one another and would 
 have still less for him, a foreigner, with their ruler a mere 
 boy, who could protect neither himself nor his guest ? It 
 might easily come about that his return to Italy would 
 be hindered ; and, supposing the crisis to come to the 
 most favourable issue, what would he get in return for 
 all this danger and anxiety? He calls to mind the 
 cases of two soothsayers who were foolish enough to 
 predict the deaths of princes, Ascletarion, and a certain 
 priest, who foretold the deaths of Domitian and Galeazzo 
 
138 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 Sforza ; and describes their fate, which was one he did 
 not desire to call down upon himself. Although his 
 forecast as to Edward's future was incomplete and 
 unsatisfactory, he foresaw what was coming upon the 
 kingdom from the fact that all the powers thereof, the 
 strong places, the treasury, the legislature, and the fleet, 
 were gathered into the hands of v one man (Northumber- 
 land). " And this man, forsooth, was one whose father l 
 the King's father had beheaded ; one who had plunged 
 into confusion all the affairs of the realm ; seeing that he 
 had brought to the scaffold, one after the other, the two 
 maternal uncles of the King. Wherefore he was driven 
 on both by his evil disposition and by his dread of the 
 future to conspire against his sovereign's Ijfe. Now in 
 such a season as this, when all men held their tongues 
 for fear (for he brought to trial whomsoever he would), 
 when he had gained over the greater part of the nobles 
 to his side by dividing amongst them the spoil of the 
 Church ; when he, the most bitter foe of the King's title 
 and dignity, had so contrived that his own will was 
 supreme in the business of the State, I became weary of 
 the whole affair ; and, being filled with pity for the young 
 King, proved to bq a better prophet on the score of my 
 inborn common-sense, than through my skill in Astrology. 
 I took my departure straightway, conscious of some evil 
 hovering anigh, and full of tears." 2 
 
 The above is Cardan's view of the machinations of the 
 statesmen in high places in the English Court during the 
 last months of Edward's life. Judged by the subsequent 
 action of Northumberland it is in the main correct ; and, 
 taking into consideration his associations and environ- 
 ment during his stay in London, this view bears evident 
 
 1 Edmund Dudley, the infamous minister of Henry VII. 
 
 2 Geniturarum Exempla^ p. 412. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 139 
 
 traces of independent judgment. Sir John Cheke, the 
 King's former preceptor, and afterwards Professor of 
 Greek at Cambridge, had received him with all the courtesy 
 due to a fellow-scholar, and probably introduced him at 
 Court. Cheke was a Chamberlain of the Exchequer, and 
 just about this time was appointed Clerk to the Privy 
 Council, wherefore he must have been fully acquainted 
 with the aims and methods of the opposing factions about 
 the Court. His fellow-clerk, Cecil, was openly opposed 
 to Northumberland's designs, and prudently advanced a 
 plea of ill health to excuse his absence from his duties : 
 but Cheke at this time was an avowed partisan of the 
 Duke, and of the policy which professed to secure the 
 ascendency of the anti-Papal party. Cardan, living in 
 daily intercourse with Cheke, might reasonably have 
 taken up the point of view of his kind and genial friend ; 
 but no, he evidently rated Northumberland, from 
 beginning to end, as a knave and a traitor, and a 
 murderer at least in will. 
 
 When he quitted England in the autumn of 1552 
 Cardan did not shake himself entirely free from English 
 associations. In an ill-starred moment he determined 
 to take back to Italy with him an English boy. 1 He 
 was windbound for several days at Dover, and the man 
 with whom he lodged seems to have offered to let him 
 take his son, named William, aged twelve years, back 
 to Italy. Cardan was pleased with the boy's manner 
 and appearance, and at once consented ; but the adven- 
 ture proved a disastrous one. The boy and his new 
 
 1 In the prologue to Dialogus de Morte^ Opera, torn. i. p. 673, he 
 gives a full account of this transaction. Of the boy himself he 
 writes :" hospes ostendit mihi filium nomine Guglielmum, setatis 
 annorum duodecim, probum, scitulum, et parentibus obsequentem. 
 Avus paternus nomine Gregorius adhuc vivebat, et erat Ligur : 
 pater Laurentius, familia nobili Cataneorum." 
 
i 4 o JEROME CARDAN 
 
 protector could not exchange a word, and only managed 
 to make each other understand by signs, and that very 
 imperfectly. The boy was resolute to go on while 
 Cardan wanted to be rid of him ; but his conscience 
 would not allow him to send him home unless he should, 
 of his own free will, ask to be sent, and by way of giving 
 William a distaste for the life he had chosen, he records 
 that he often beat him cruelly on the slightest pretext. 
 But the boy was not to be shaken off. He persisted in 
 following his venture to the end, and arrived in Cardan's 
 train at Milan, where he was allowed to go his own way. 
 The only care for his training Cardan took was to have 
 him taught music. He chides the unhappy boy for 
 his indifference to learning and for his love of the com- 
 pany of other youths. What with his literary work 
 and the family troubles which so soon fell upon him, 
 Cardan's hands were certainly full ; but, all allowance 
 being made, it is difficult to find a valid excuse for this 
 neglect on his part. William grew up to be a young 
 man, and was finally apprenticed to a tailor at Pavia, 
 but his knavish master set him to work as a vinedresser, 
 suspecting that Cardan cared little what happened so 
 long as the young man was kept out of his sight. 
 William seems to have been a merry, good-tempered 
 fellow ; but his life was a short one, for he took fever, 
 and died in his twenty-second year. 1 
 
 Besides chronicling this strange and somewhat pathetic 
 incident, Cardan sets down in the Dialogus de Morte his 
 general impressions of the English people. Alluding to 
 the fear of death, he remarks that the English, so far as 
 
 1 Opera, torn. i. p. 119. Cardan here calls him "Gulielmus 
 Lataneus Anglus adolescens mihi charissimus." In the De Morte, 
 however, he speaks of him as "ex familia Cataneorum" (see last 
 page). 
 
JEROME CARDAN 141 
 
 he has observed, were scarcely at all affected by it, and 
 he commends their wisdom, seeing that death is the last 
 ill we have to suffer, and is, moreover, inevitable. " And 
 if an Englishman views his own death with composure, 
 he is even less disturbed over that of a friend or kins- 
 man : he will look forward to re-union in a future state 
 of immortality. People like these, who stand up thus 
 readily to face death and mourn not over their nearest 
 ones, surely deserve sympathy, and this boy (William) 
 was sprung from the same race. In stature the Eng- 
 lish resemble Italians, they are fairer in complexion, less 
 ruddy, and broad in the chest. There are some very 
 tall men amongst them : they are gentle in manner 
 and friendly to travellers, but easily angered, and in 
 this case are much to be dreaded. They are brave 
 in battle, but wanting in caution ; great eaters and 
 drinkers, but in this respect the Germans exceed 
 them, and they are prone rather than prompt to lust. 
 Some amongst them are distinguished in talent, and of 
 these Scotus and Suisset l may be given as examples. 
 They dress like Italians, and are always fain to declare 
 that they are more nearly allied to us than to any 
 others, wherefore they try specially to imitate us in 
 habit and manners as closely as they can. They are 
 trustworthy, freehanded, and ambitious; but in speaking 
 of bravery, nothing can be more marvellous than the 
 
 1 Cardan writes (De Subtilitate, p. 444) that Suisset [Richard 
 Swineshead], who lived about 1350, was known as the Calculator ; 
 but Kastner \Gesch. der Math. i. 50] maintains that the title 
 Calculator should be applied to the book rather than to the author, 
 and hints that this misapprehension on Cardan's part shows that 
 he knew of Suisset only by hearsay. The title of the copy of Suisset 
 in the British Museum stands " Subtilissimi Doctoris Anglici 
 Suiset. Calculations Liber," Padue [1485]. Brunet gives one, 
 " Opus aureum calculationum," Pavia, 1498. 
 
142 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 conduct of the Highland Scots, who are wont to take 
 with them, when they are led to execution, one playing 
 upon the pipes, who, as often as not, is condemned like- 
 wise, and thus he leads the train dancing to death." 
 Like as the English were to Italians in other respects, 
 Cardan was struck with the difference between the two 
 nations as soon as the islanders opened their mouths to 
 speak. He could not understand a single word, but 
 stood amazed, deeming them to be Italians who had 
 lost their wits. " The tongue is curved upon the palate; 
 they turn about their words in the mouth, and make a 
 hissing sound with their teeth." He then goes on to 
 say that all the time of his absence his mind was full of 
 thoughts of his own people in Italy, wherefore he sought 
 leave to return at once. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 CARDAN travelled southward by way of the Low 
 Countries. He stayed some days at Antwerp, and 
 during his visit he was pressed urgently to remain in 
 the city and practise his art. A less pleasant experience 
 was a fall into a ditch when he was coming out of a 
 goldsmith's shop. He was cut and bruised about the 
 left ear, but the damage was only skin-deep. He went 
 on by Brussels and Cologne to Basel, where he once 
 more tarried several days. He had a narrow escape 
 here of falling into danger, for, had he not been fore- 
 warned by Guglielmo Gratarolo, a friend, he would have 
 taken up his quarters in a house infected by the plague. 
 He was received as a guest by Carlo Affaidato, a learned 
 astronomer and physicist, who, on the day of departure, 
 made him accept a valuable mule, worth a hundred 
 crowns. Another generous offer of a similar kind was 
 made to him shortly afterwards by a Genoese gentle- 
 man of the family of Ezzolino, who fell in with him 
 accidentally on the road. This was the gift of a very 
 fine horse (of the sort which the English call Obinum), 
 but, greatly as Cardan desired to have the horse, his 
 sense of propriety kept him back from accepting this 
 gift. 1 
 
 He went next to Besangon, where he was received by 
 Franciscus Bonvalutus, a scholar of some note, and then 
 
 1 De Vita Propria, ch. xxxii. p. 100. 
 43 
 
144 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 by Berne to Zurich. He must have crossed the Alps 
 by the Splugen Pass, as Chur is named in his itinerary, 
 and he also describes his voyage down the Lake of Como 
 on the way to Milan, where he arrived on January 3, 
 1553. Cardan was a famous physician when he set out 
 on his northward journey ; but now on his return he 
 stood firmly placed by the events of the last few months 
 at the head of his profession. Writing of the material 
 results of his mission to Scotland, he declares that he is 
 ashamed to set down the terms upon which he was 
 paid, so lavishly was he rewarded for his services. The 
 offers made to him by so many exalted personages to 
 secure his permanent and exclusive attention would 
 indeed have turned the heads of most men. There was 
 the offer from the King of Denmark ; another, in 1552, 
 from the King of France at a salary of thirteen hundred 
 crowns a year ; and yet another made by the agents of 
 Charles V., who was then engaged in his disastrous 
 attack upon Metz. All of them he refused : he had no 
 inclination to share the perils of the leaguer of Metz, 
 and his sense of loyalty forbad him to join himself to 
 the power which was at that time warring against his 
 sovereign. He speaks also of another offer made to him 
 by the Queen of Scotland of a generous salary if he 
 would settle in Scotland ; but the country was too 
 remote for his taste. There is no authority for this 
 offer except the De Vita Propria, and it is there set 
 down in terms which render it somewhat difficult to 
 identify the Queen aforesaid. 1 
 
 As soon as he entered Milan, Ferrante Gonzaga, the 
 
 1 De Vita Propria, ch. iv. p. 16 : "cum Scotorum Regina cujus 
 levirum curaveram." Cardan had probably prescribed for a brother 
 of the Due de Longueville, the first husband of Mary of Guise, 
 during his sojourn in Paris. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 145 
 
 Governor, desired to secure his services as physician to 
 the Duke of Mantua, his brother, offering him thirty 
 thousand gold crowns as honorarium ; but, in spite of 
 the Governor's persuasions and threats, be would not 
 accept the office. When the news had come to Paris 
 that Cardan was about to quit Britain, forty of the most 
 illustrious scientists of France repaired to Paris in order 
 to hear him expound the art of Medicine ; but the dis- 
 turbed state of the country deterred him from setting 
 foot in France. He refers to a letter from his friend 
 Ranconet as a testimony of the worship that was paid 
 to him, and goes on to say that, in his journeying 
 through France and Germany, he fared much as Plato 
 fared at the Olympic games. 
 
 In a passage which Cardan wrote shortly after his 
 return from Britain, he lets it be seen that he was not 
 ill-satisfied with the figure he then made in the world. 
 He writes "Therefore, since all those with whom I am 
 intimate think well of me for my truth and probity, I 
 can let my envious rivals indulge themselves as they list 
 in the shameful habit of evil-speaking. With regard to 
 folly, if I now utter, or ever have uttered, foolish words, 
 let those who accuse me show their evidence, I, who 
 was born poor, with a weakly body, in an age vexed 
 almost incessantly by wars and tumults, helped on by 
 no family influence, but forced to contend against the 
 bitter opposition of the College at Milan, contrived to 
 overcome all the plots woven against me, and open 
 violence as well. All the honours which a physician 
 can possess I either enjoy, or have refused when they 
 were offered to me. I have raised the fortunes of my 
 family, and have lived a blameless life. I am well 
 known to all men of worship, and to the whole of 
 Europe. What I have written has been lauded ; in 
 
146 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 sooth, I have written of so many things and at such 
 length, that a man could scarcely read my works if he 
 spent his life therewith. I have taken good care of my 
 domestic affairs, and by common consent I have come 
 off victor in every contest I have tried. I have refused 
 always to flatter the great ; and over and beyond this I 
 have often set myself in active opposition to them. My 
 name will be found scattered about the pages of many 
 writers. I shall deem my life long enough if I come in 
 perfect health to the age of fifty-six. I have been most 
 fortunate as the discoverer of many and important con- 
 tributions to knowledge, as well as in the practice of my 
 art and in the results attained ; so much so that if my 
 fame in the first instance has raised up envy against me, 
 it has prevailed finally, and extinguished all ill-feeling." l 
 These words were written before the publication of 
 the Geniturarum Exempla in 1554. Cardan's life for 
 the six years which followed was busy and prosperous, 
 but on the whole uneventful. The Archbishop of St. 
 Andrews wrote to him according to promise at the end 
 of two years to give an account of the results of his 
 treatment. His letter is worthy of remark as showing 
 that he, the person most interested, was well satisfied 
 with Cardan's skill as a physician. Michael, the Arch- 
 bishop's chief chamberlain, was the bearer thereof, and 
 as Hamilton speaks of him as "epistolam vivam," it is 
 probable that he bore likewise certain verbal messages 
 which could be more safely carried thus than in writing. 
 A sentence in the De Vita Proprict? mixed up with the 
 account of Hamilton's cure, seems to refer to this 
 embassy, and to suggest that Michael was authorized 
 to promise Cardan a liberal salary if he would accept 
 
 1 Geniturarum Exempla, p. 459. 
 
 2 De Vita Propria, ch. xl. p. 137. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 147 
 
 permanent office in the Primate's household. Moreover, 
 Hamilton writes somewhat querulously about Cassanate's 
 absence abroad on a visit to his family, a fact which 
 would make him all the more eager to secure Cardan's 
 services. His letter runs as follows "Two of your 
 most welcome letters, written some months ago, I re- 
 ceived by the hand of an English merchant ; others 
 came by the care of the Lord Bishop of Dunkeld, together 
 with the Indian balsam. The last were from Scoto, who 
 sent at the same time your most scholarly comments on 
 that difficult work of Ptolemy. 1 To all that you have 
 written to me I have replied fully in three or four letters 
 of my own, but I know not whether, out of all I have 
 written, any letter of mine has reached you. But now 
 I have directed that a servant of mine, who is known to 
 you, and who is travelling to Rome, shall wait upon 
 
 1 Commentaria in Ptolemcei de Astrorum Judiciis (Basil, 1554). 
 He wrote these notes while going down the Loire in company with 
 Cassanate on his way from Lyons to Paris in 1552. De Vita 
 Propria, ch. xlv. p. 175. 
 
 He gives an interesting account (Opera, torn. i. p. no) as to 
 how the book first came under his notice. The day before he 
 quitted Lyons with Cassanate, a school-master came to ask for 
 advice, which Cardan gave gratis. Then the patient, knowing 
 perhaps the physician's taste for the marvellous, related how there 
 was a certain boy in the place who could see spirits by looking into 
 an earthen vessel, but Cardan was little impressed by what he saw, 
 and began to talk with the school-master about Archimedes. The 
 school-master brought out a work of the Greek philosopher with 
 which was bound up the Ptolemcei Libri de Judiciis. Cardan fastened 
 upon it at once, and wanted to buy it, but the school-master in- 
 sisted that he should take it as a gift. He declares that his 
 Commentaries thereupon are the most perfect of all his writings. 
 The book contains his famous Nativity of Christ. A remark in 
 De Libris Propriis (cf. Opera, torn. i. p. 67) indicates that there was 
 an earlier edition of Ptolemy, printed at Milan at Cardan's own 
 cost, because when he saw the numerous mistakes made by 
 Ottaviano Scoto in printing the De Malo Medendi and the De 
 Consolatione, he determined to go to another printer. 
 
i 4 8 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 you and salute you in my name, and bear to you my 
 gratitude, not only for the various gifts I have received 
 from you, but likewise because my health is well-nigh 
 restored, the ailment which vexed me is driven away, 
 my strength increased, and my life renewed. Wherefore 
 I rate myself debtor for all these benefits, as well as 
 this very body of mine. For, from the time when I 
 began to take these medicines of yours, selected and 
 compounded with so great skill, my complaint has 
 afflicted me less frequently and severely ; indeed, now, as 
 a rule, I am not troubled therewith more than once a 
 month ; sometimes I escape for two months." 1 
 
 In the following year (1555) Cardan's daughter Chiara, 
 who seems to have been a virtuous and well-conducted 
 girl, was married to Bartolomeo Sacco, a young Milanese 
 gentleman of good family, a match which proved to 
 be fortunate. Cardan had now reached that summit of 
 fame against which the shafts of jealousy will always be 
 directed. The literary manners of the age certainly 
 lacked urbanity, and of all living controversialists there 
 was none more truculent than Julius Caesar Scaliger, 
 who had begun his career as a man of letters by a fierce 
 assault upon Erasmus with regard to his Ciceronianus, 
 a leading case amongst the quarrels of authors. Erasmus 
 he had attacked for venturing to throw doubts upon the 
 suitability of Cicero's Latin as a vehicle of modern 
 thought ; this quarrel was over a question of form ; and 
 now Scaliger went a step farther, and, albeit he knew 
 little of the subject in hand, published a book of 
 Esoteric Exercitations to show that the De Subtilitate of 
 Cardan was nothing but a tissue of nonsense. 2 The book 
 
 1 Opera, torn. i. p. 93. 
 
 2 Cardan notices the attack in these words " His diebus quidam 
 conscripserat adversus nostrum de Subtilitate librum, Opus ingens. 
 Adversus quern ego Apologiam scripsi." Opera, torn. i. p. 117. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 149 
 
 was written with all the heavy-handed brutality he was 
 accustomed to use, but it did no hurt to Cardan's repu- 
 tation, and, irritable as he was by nature, it failed to 
 provoke him to make an immediate rejoinder, a delay 
 which was the cause of one of the most diverting incidents 
 in the whole range of literary warfare. 
 
 Scaliger sat in his study, eagerly expecting a reply, 
 but Cardan took no notice of the attack. Then one 
 day some tale-bearer, moved either by the spirit of 
 tittle-tattle or the love of mischief, brought to Julius 
 Caesar the news that Jerome Cardan had sunk under 
 his tremendous battery of abuse, and was dead. It is 
 but bare charity to assume that Scaliger was touched 
 by some stings of regret when he heard what had been 
 the fatal result of his onslaught ; still there can be little 
 doubt that his mind was filled with a certain satisfaction 
 when he reflected that he was in sooth a terrible as- 
 sailant, and that his fist was heavier than any other 
 man's. In any case, he felt that it behoved him to 
 make some sign, wherefore he sat down and penned 
 a funeral oration over his supposed victim, which is 
 worth giving at length. 1 
 
 " At this season, when fate has dealt with me in a 
 fashion so wretched and untoward that it has connected 
 my name with a cruel public calamity, when a literary 
 essay of mine, well known to the world, and undertaken 
 at the call of duty, has ensued in dire misfortune, it 
 seems to me that I am bound to bequeath to posterity 
 
 Scaliger absurdly calls his work the fifteenth book of Exer citations > 
 and wished the world to believe that he had written, though not 
 printed, the fourteen others. 
 
 1 It was not printed until many years after the deaths of both 
 disputants, and appeared for the first time in a volume of Scaliger's 
 letters and speeches published at Toulouse in 1621, and it was after- 
 wards affixed to the De Vita Propria. 
 
150 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 a testimony that, sharp as may have been the vexation 
 brought upon Jerome Cardan by my trifling censures, 
 the grief which now afflicts me on account of his death 
 is ten times sharper. For, even if Cardan living should 
 have been a terror to me, I, who am but a single unit 
 in the republic of letters, ought to have postponed my 
 own and singular convenience to the common good, 
 seeing how excellent were the merits of this man, in 
 every sort of learning. For now the republic is bereft 
 of a great and incomparable scholar, and must needs 
 suffer a loss which, peradventure, none of the centuries 
 to come will repair. What though I am a person of 
 small account, I could count upon him as a supporter, a 
 judge, and (immortal gods) even a laudator of my lucu- 
 brations ; for he was so greatly impressed by their 
 weighty merits, that he deemed he would best defend 
 himself by avoiding all comment on the same, despair- 
 ing of his own strength, and knowing not how great his 
 powers really were. In this respect he was so skilful a 
 master, that he could assuredly have fathomed the depths 
 of every method and every device used against him, and 
 would thereby have made his castigation of myself to 
 serve as an augmentation of his own fame. He, in 
 sooth, was a man of such quality that, if he had deemed 
 it a thing demanded of him by equity, he would never 
 have hesitated to point out to other students the truth 
 of those words which I had written against him as an ac- 
 cusation, while, on the other hand, this same constancy 
 of mind would have made him adhere to the opinions 
 he might have put forth in the first instance, so far as 
 these opinions were capable of proof. I, when I ad- 
 dressed my Exercitations to him during his life to him 
 whom I knew by common report to be the most in- 
 genious and learned of mortal men was in good hope 
 
JEROME CARDAN 151 
 
 that I might issue from this conflict a conqueror; and is 
 there living a man blind enough not to perceive that 
 what I looked for was hard-earned credit, which I should 
 certainly have won by finding my views confirmed by 
 Cardan living, and not for inglorious peace brought 
 about by his death ? And indeed I might have been 
 suffered to have share in the bounty and kindliness of 
 this illustrious man, whom I have always heard de- 
 scribed as a shrewd antagonist and one full of confidence 
 in his own high position, for it was an easy task to win 
 from him the ordinary rights of friendship by any 
 trifling letter, seeing that he was the most courteous of 
 mankind. It is scarcely likely that I, weary as I was, 
 one who in fighting had long been used to perils of all 
 sorts, should thus cast aside my courage ; that I, worn 
 out by incessant controversies and consumed by the 
 daily wear and tear of writing, should care for an in- 
 glorious match with so distinguished an antagonist ; or 
 that I should have set my heart upon winning a bare 
 victory in the midst of all this dust and tumult. For 
 not only was the result which has ensued unlooked for 
 in the nature of things and in the opinion of all men 
 qualified to judge in such a case ; it was also the last 
 thing I could have desired to happen, for the sake of 
 my good name. My judgment has ever been that all 
 men (for in sooth all of us are, so to speak, little less 
 than nothing) may so lose their heads in controversy 
 that they may actually fight against their own interests. 
 And if such a mischance as this may happen to any 
 man of eminence as has been my case, and the case of 
 divers others I could recall it shall not be written down 
 in the list of his errors, unless in aftertimes he shall 
 seek to justify the same. It is necessary to advance 
 roughness in the place of refinement, and stubborn 
 
152 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 tenacity for steadfastness. No man can be pronounced 
 guilty of offence on the score of some hasty word or 
 other which may escape his lips ; such a charge should 
 rather be made when he defends himself by unworthy 
 methods. Therefore if Cardan during his life, being 
 well advised in the matter, should have kept silent over 
 my attempts to correct him, what could have brought 
 me greater credit than this ? He would have bowed to 
 my opinion in seemly fashion, and would have taken 
 my censures as those of a father or a preceptor. But 
 supposing that he had ventured to engage in a sharper 
 controversy with me over this question, is there any one 
 living who would fail to see that he might have gone 
 near to lose his wits on account of the mental agitation 
 which had afflicted him in the past ? But as soon as 
 his superhuman intellect had thoroughly grasped the 
 question, it seemed to him that he must needs be called 
 upon to bear what was intolerable. He could not pluck 
 up courage enough to bear it by living, so he bore it by 
 dying. Moreover, what he might well have borne, he 
 could not bring himself to bear, to wit that he and I 
 should come to an agreement and should formulate 
 certain well-balanced decisions for the common good. 
 For this reason I lament deeply my share in this affair, 
 I who had most obvious reasons for engaging in this 
 conflict, and the clearest ones for inventing a story as 
 to the victory I hoped to gain ; reasons which a man 
 of sober temper could never anticipate, which a brave 
 man would never desire. 
 
 " Cardan's fame has its surest foundation in the praise 
 of his adversaries. I lament greatly this misfortune of our 
 republic : the causes of which the parliament of lettered 
 men may estimate by its particular rules, but it cannot 
 rate this calamity in relation to the excellences of this 
 
JEROME CARDAN 153 
 
 illustrious personality. For in a man of learning three 
 properties ought to stand out pre-eminently a spotless 
 and gentle rule of life ; manifold and varied learning ; 
 and consummate talent joined to the shrewdest capacity 
 for forming a judgment. These three points Cardan 
 attained so completely that he seemed to have been 
 made entirely for himself, and at the same time to have 
 been the only mortal made for mankind at large. No 
 one could be more courteous to his inferiors or more 
 ready to discuss the scheme of the universe with any man 
 of mark with whom he might chance to foregather. He 
 was a man of kingly courtesy, of sympathetic loftiness 
 of mind, one fitted for all places, for all occasions, for 
 all men and for all fortunes. In reference to learning 
 itself, I beg you to look around upon the accomplished 
 circle of the learned now living on the earth, in this 
 most fortunate age of ours ; here the combination of 
 individual talent shows us a crowd of illustrious men, 
 but each one of these displays himself as occupied with 
 some special portion of Philosophy. But Cardan, in 
 addition to his profound knowledge of the secrets of 
 God and Nature, was a consummate master of the 
 humaner letters, and was wont to expound the same with 
 such eloquence that those who listened to him would 
 have been justified in affirming that he could have 
 studied nothing else all his life. A great man indeed ! 
 Great if he could lay claim to no other excellence than 
 this ; and forsooth, when we come to consider the 
 quickness of his wit, his fiery energy in everything he 
 undertook, whether of the least or the greatest moment, 
 his laborious diligence and unconquerable steadfastness, 
 I affirm that the man who shall venture to compare 
 himself with Cardan may well be regarded as one 
 lacking in all due modesty. I forsooth feel no hostility 
 
i 5 4 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 towards one whose path never crossed mine, nor envy of 
 one whose shadow never touched mine ; the numerous 
 and weighty questions dealt with in his monumental 
 work urged me on to undertake the task of gaining 
 some knowledge of the same. After the completion of 
 the Commentaries on Subtlety, he published as a kind of 
 appendix to these that most learned work the De Rerum 
 Varietate. And in this case, before news was brought 
 to me of his death, I followed my customary practice, 
 and in the course of three days compiled an Excursus 
 in short chapters. When I heard that he was dead I 
 brought them together into one little book, in order that 
 I also might lend a hand in this great work of his, 
 and this thing I did after a fashion which he himself 
 would have approved, supposing that at some time 
 or other he might have held discourse with me, or 
 with some other yet more learned man, concerning his 
 affairs." 1 
 
 1 " Si Scaliger avoit eu un peu moins de de"mangeaison de 
 centre dire, il auroit acquis plus de gloire, qu'il n'a fait dans ce 
 combat : mais, ce que les Grecs ont apell d/utrpt'a r^s dvOoXicrjs, une 
 passion excessive de prendre le contrepied des autres, a fait grand 
 tort a Scaliger. C'est par ce principe qu'il a soutenu que le perro- 
 quet est une tres laide bete. Si Cardan Peut dit, Scaliger lui cut 
 oppose^ ce qu'on trouve dans les anciens Poetes touchant la beaute* 
 de cet oiseau. Vossius a fait une Critique tres judicieuse de cette 
 humeur contrariante de Scaliger, et a marque en mme temps en 
 quoi ces deux Antagonistes dtoient superieurs et inferieures, 1'un a 
 1'autre." (Scaliger, in Exercitat., 246.) " Quia Cardanus psittacum 
 commendarat a colorum varietate ac prseterea fulgore, quod et Appu- 
 leius facit in secundo Floridorum, contra contendit esse deformem, 
 non modo ob fceditatem rostri, ac crurum, et linguae, sed etiam quia 
 sit coloris fusci ac cinericii, qui tristis. Quid faciamus summo 
 Viro ? Si Cardanus ea dixisset, provocasset ad judicia poetarum, 
 atque adeo omnium hominum. Nunc quia pulchri dixit coloris, 
 ille deformis contendit. Hoc contradictionis studium, quod ubique 
 in hisce exercitationibus se prodit, sophista dignius est, quamque 
 philosopho." Bayle : Article " Cardan." (Sir Thomas Browne, in 
 one of his Commonplace Books, observes "If Cardan saith a 
 
JEROME CARDAN 155 
 
 It is a matter of regret that this cry of peccavi was 
 not published till all the chief literary contemporaries of 
 Scaliger were in their graves. As it did not appear till 
 1621, the men of his own time were not able to enjoy the 
 shout of laughter over his discomfiture which would 
 surely have gone up from Paris and Strasburg and Basel 
 and Zurich. Estienne and Gessner would hardly have 
 felt acute sorrow at a flout put upon Julius Caesar 
 Scaliger. Crooked-tempered as he was, Cardan, com- 
 pared with Scaliger, was as a rose to a thistle, but there 
 were reasons altogether unconnected with the personal- 
 ities of the disputants which swayed the balance to Car- 
 dan's advantage. The greater part of Scaliger's criticism 
 was worthless, and the opinion of learned Europe weighed 
 overwhelmingly on Cardan's side. Thuanus, 1 who as- 
 suredly did not love him, and Naude", who positively 
 disliked him, subsequently gave testimony in his favour. 
 He did not follow the example of Erasmus, and let 
 Scaliger's abuse go by in silence, but he took the next 
 wisest course. He published a short and dignified reply, 
 Actio prima in Calumniator em ^ in which, from title-page 
 
 parrot is a beautiful bird, Scaliger will set his wits on work to 
 prove it a deformed animal.") 
 
 Mauds' (Apologie, ch. xiii.) says that of the great men of modern 
 times Scaliger and Cardan each claimed the possession of a guardian 
 spirit, and hints that Scaliger may have been moved to make this 
 claim in order not to be outdone by his great antagonist. It should, 
 however, be remembered that Cardan did not seriously assert this 
 belief till long after his controversy with Scaliger. Naude sums up 
 thus : " D'ou Ton peut juger asseurement, que lui et Scaliger n'ont 
 point eu d'autre Genie que la grande doctrine qu'ils s'e'toient ac- 
 quis par leurs veilles, par leurs travaux, et par I'expe'rience qu'ils 
 avoient des choses sur lesquelles venant a dlever leur jugement ils 
 jugeoint pertinemment de toutes matieres, et ne laissoient rien 
 e"chapper qui ne leur fust conneu et manifeste." 
 
 1 Thuanus, ad Annum MDLXXVI, part of the Appendix to the 
 De Vita Propria. 
 
i 5 6 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 to colophon, Scaliger's name never once occurs. The 
 gist of the book may best be understood by quoting an 
 extract from the criticism of Cardan by Naude prefixed 
 to the De Vita Propria. He writes : " This proposition 
 of mine will best be comprehended by the man who 
 shall set to work to compare Cardan with Julius Caesar 
 Scaliger, his rival, and a man endowed with an intellect 
 almost superhuman. For Scaliger, although he came upon 
 the stage with greater pomp and display, and brought 
 with him a mind filled with daring speculation, and ade- 
 quate to the highest flights, kept closely behind the lattices 
 of the humaner letters and of medical philosophy, leaving 
 to Cardan full liberty to occupy whatever ground of argu- 
 ment he might find most advantageous in any other of 
 the fields of learning. Moreover, if any one shall give 
 daily study to these celebrated Exercitations, he will 
 find therein nothing to show that Cardan is branded 
 by any mark of shame which may not be removed 
 with the slightest trouble, if the task be undertaken 
 in a spirit of justice. For, in the first place, who can 
 maintain that Scaliger was justified in publishing his 
 Exercitations three years after the issue of the second 
 edition of the Libri de Subtilitate, without ever having 
 taken the trouble to read this edition, and without 
 exempting from censure the errors which Cardan had 
 diligently expunged from his book in the course of his 
 latest revision, lest he (Scaliger) should find that all 
 the mighty labour expended over his criticisms had 
 been spent in vain ? Besides, who does not know that 
 Cardan, in his Actio prima in Calumniatorem, blunted the 
 point of all his assailant's weapons, swept away all his 
 objections, and broke in pieces all his accusations, in 
 such wise that the very reason of their existence ceased 
 to be ? Cardan, in sooth, was a true man, and held all 
 
JEROME CARDAN 157 
 
 humanity as akin to him. There is small reason why 
 we should marvel that he erred now and again ; it is a 
 marvel much greater that he should only have gone 
 astray so seldom and in things of such trifling moment. 
 Indeed I will dare to affirm, and back my opinion with 
 a pledge, that the errors which Scaliger left behind him 
 in these Exercitations were more in number than those 
 which he so wantonly laid to Cardan's charge, having 
 sweated nine years over the task. And this he did not 
 so much in the interests of true erudition as with the 
 desire of coming to blows with all those whom he 
 recognized as the chiefs of learning." 
 
 During the whole dispute Cardan kept his temper 
 admirably. Scaliger was a physician of repute ; and it 
 is not improbable that the spectacle of Cardan's 
 triumphal progress back to Milan from the North may 
 have aroused his jealousy and stimulated him to make 
 his ill-judged attack. But even on the ground of medical 
 science he was no match for Cardan, while in mathe- 
 matics and philosophy he was immeasurably inferior. 
 Cardan felt probably that the attack was nothing more 
 than the buzzing of a gadfly, and that in any case it 
 would make for his own advantage and credit, where- 
 fore he saw no reason why he should disquiet himself ; 
 indeed his attitude of dignified indifference was ad- 
 mirably calculated to win for him the approval of the 
 learned world by the contrast it furnished to the raging 
 fury of his adversary. 1 
 
 After the heavy labour of editing and issuing to the 
 world the De Rerum Varietate, and of re-editing the 
 
 1 Cardan does not seem to have harboured animosity against 
 Scaliger. In the De Vita Propria, ch. xlviii. p. 198, he writes : 
 "Julius Caesar Scaliger plures mihi titulos ascribit, quam ego 
 mihi concedi postulassem, appellans ingenium profundissimum > 
 feUcissimum^ et incomparabile? 
 
i 5 8 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 first issue of the De Subtilitate, Cardan might well have 
 given himself a term of rest, but to a man of his temper, 
 idleness, or even a relaxation of the strain, is usually 
 irksome. The De Varietate was first printed at Basel 
 in 1553, and, as soon as it was out of the press, it 
 brought a trouble not indeed a very serious one 
 upon the author. The printer, Petrus of Basel (who 
 must not be confused with Petreius of Nuremberg) 
 took it upon him to add to Chapter LXXX of the work 
 some disparaging remarks about the Dominican brother- 
 hoods, making Cardan responsible for the assertion that 
 they were rapacious wolves who hunted down reputed 
 witches and despisers of God, not because of their 
 offences, but because they chanced to be the possessors 
 of much wealth. Cardan remonstrated at once he 
 always made it his practice to keep free from all theo- 
 logical wrangling, but Petrus treated the whole question 
 with ridicule, 1 and it does not seem that Cardan could 
 have had any very strong feeling in the matter, for the 
 obnoxious passage is retained in the editions of 1556 
 and 1557. The religious authorities were however fully 
 justified in assuming that the presence of such a passage 
 in the pages of a book so widely popular as the De 
 Varietate would necessarily prove a cause of scandal, 
 
 1 " Quid tua interest quod quatuor verba adjecerim ? an hoc 
 tantum crimen est ! quid facerem absens absent! ? " Cardan writes 
 on in meditative strain : " Coeterum cum non ignorem maculates 
 fuisse codices B. Hieronimi, atque aliorum patrum nostrorum, ab his 
 qui aliter sentiebant, erroremque suum auctoritate viri tegere volue- 
 runt: ut ne quis in nostris operibus hallucinetur vel ab aliis decipiatur, 
 sciant omnes me nullibi Theologum agere, nee velle in alienam 
 messem falcem ponere." Opera, torn. i. p. 112. 
 
 Johannes Wierus, one of the first rationalists on the subject of 
 witchcraft, has quoted largely from Chapter LXXX of De Varietate 
 in his book De Prcestigiis Dcemonum, in urging his case against 
 the orthodox view. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 159 
 
 and give cause to the enemy to blaspheme. For 
 Reginald Scot, in the eighth chapter of Discoverie of 
 Witchcraft, alludes to the passage in question in the 
 following terms : " Cardanus writeth that the cause of 
 such credulitie consisteth in three points : to wit in the 
 imagination of the melancholike, in the constancie of 
 them that are corrupt therewith, and in the deceipt of 
 the Judges ; who being inquisitors themselves against 
 heretikes and witches, did both accuse and condemne 
 them, having for their labour the spoile of their goods. 
 So as these inquisitors added many fables hereunto, 
 least they should seeme to have doone injurie to the 
 poore wretches, in condemning and executing them for 
 none offense. But sithens (said he) the springing up of 
 Luther's sect, these priests have tended more diligentlie 
 upon the execution of them ; bicause more wealth is to 
 be caught from them ; insomuch as now they deale so 
 looselie with witches (through distrust of gaines) that all 
 is seene to be malice, follie, or avarice that hath beene 
 practised against them. And whosoever shall search 
 into this cause, or read the cheefe writers hereupon, 
 shall find his words true." 
 
 In 1554 Cardan published also with Petrus of Basel 
 the Ptolemczi de astrorum judiciis with the Geniturarum 
 Exempla, bound in one volume, but he seems to have 
 written nothing but a book of fables for the young, con- 
 cerning which he subsequently remarks that, in his 
 opinion, grown men might read the same with advant- 
 age. It is a matter of regret that this work should have 
 disappeared, for it would have been interesting to note 
 how far Cardan's intellect, acute and many-sided as it 
 was, was capable of dealing with the literature of 
 allegory and imagination. He has set down one fact 
 concerning it, to wit that it contained " multa de futuris 
 
160 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 arcana." The next year he produced only a few medical 
 trifles, but in 1557 he brought out two other scientific 
 works which he characterizes as admirable one the Ars 
 parva curandi, and the other a treatise De Urinis. In 
 the same year he published the book which, in forming 
 a judgment of him as a man and a writer, is perhaps as 
 valuable as the De Vita Propria and the De Utilitate, 
 to wit the De Libriis Propriis. This work exists in 
 three forms : the first, a short treatise, " cui titulus 
 est ephemerus," is dedicated to " Hieronymum Carda- 
 num medicum, affinem suum," and has the date of 1543. 
 The second has the date of 1554, and, according to 
 Naude\ was first published " apud Gulielmum Rovillium 
 sub scuto Veneto, Lugduni, 1557." The third was 
 begun in I56O, 1 and contains comments written in sub- 
 sequent years. The first is of slight interest, the 
 second is a sort of register of his works, amplified from 
 year to year, while the third has more the form of a 
 treatise, and presents with some degree of symmetry 
 the crude materials contained in the first. Having 
 finished with his writings up to the year 1564, Cardan 
 lapses into a philosophizing strain, and opens his dis- 
 course with the ominous words, " Sed jam ad institutum 
 revertamur, dque ipso vitae humanae genere aliquo 
 dicamus." He begins with a disquisition on the worth- 
 lessness of life, and repeats somewhat tediously the story 
 of his visit to Scotland. He gives a synopsis of all 
 the sciences he had ever studied Theology, Dialectics, 
 Arithmetic, Music, Optics, Astronomy, Astrology, Geo- 
 metry, Chiromancy, Agriculture, Medicine, passing on 
 to treat of Magic, portents and warnings, and of his own 
 experience of the same at the crucial moments of his 
 
 1 Opera,) torn. i. p. 96. " Annus hie est Salutis millesimus quingen- 
 tesimus ac sexagesimus." 
 
JEROME CARDAN 161 
 
 life. He ends by a reference to an incident already 
 chronicled in the De Vita Propria, 1 how he escaped 
 death or injury from a falling mass of masonry by 
 crossing the street in obedience to an impulse he could not 
 explain, and speculates why God, who was able to save 
 him on this occasion with so little trouble, should have 
 let him rush on and court the overwhelming stroke 
 which ultimately laid him low. 
 
 1 De Vita Propria, ch. xxx. p. 78. 
 
 M 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE year 1555 may be held to mark the point of 
 time at which Cardan reached the highest point of his 
 fortunes. After a long and bitter struggle with an 
 adverse world he had come out a conqueror, and his 
 rise to fame and opulence, if somewhat slow, had been 
 steady and secure. He longed for wealth, not that he 
 might figure as a rich man, but so that he might win the 
 golden independence which permits a student to prose- 
 cute the task which seems to subserve the highest pur- 
 poses of true learning, and frees him from the irksome 
 battle for daily bread. He loved, indeed, to spend money 
 over beautiful things, and there are few more attractive 
 touches in the picture he draws of himself than the 
 confession of his passion for costly penholders, gems, 
 rare books, vessels of brass and silver, and painted 
 spheres. 1 In this brief season of ease and security, 
 there were no flaming portents in the sky to foretell 
 the cruel stroke of evil fortune which was destined 
 so soon to fall upon him. 
 
 Cardan has left a very pathetic sketch of his own 
 miserable boyhood in the strangely ordered home in 
 Milan, with his callous, tyrannical father, his quick- 
 tempered mother, and the superadded torment of his 
 Aunt Margaret's presence. Fazio Cardano was a man 
 
 1 De Vita Propria, p. 57. 
 162 
 
JEROME CARDAN 163 
 
 of rigorous sobriety, and he seems moreover to have 
 atoned for his early irregularities by the practice of that 
 austere piety which Jerome notices more than once as a 
 characteristic of his old age. 1 The discipline was hard, 
 and the life unlovely, but the home was at least decent 
 and orderly, and no opportunities or provocations to 
 loose manners or ill doing existed therein. In Cardan's 
 own case it is to be feared that, after Lucia's death, the 
 affairs of his household fell into dire confusion, in spite 
 of the presence of his mother-in-law, Thadea, who had 
 come to him as housekeeper her husband, Altobello, 
 having died soon after the marriage of his daughter with 
 Cardan. He was an ardent lover of music, and, as a 
 consequence, his house would be constantly filled with 
 singing men and boys, a tribe of somewhat sinister 
 reputation. 2 Then, when he was not engaged with 
 music, he would be gambling in some fashion or other. 
 
 1 " In ore illud semper ei erat : Omnis spiritus laudet Dominum, 
 qui ipse est fons omnium virtutum." De Vita Propria, ch. iii. p. 7. 
 Reginald Scot, in the Discoverie of Witchcraft, says that the 
 aforesaid exclamation of Fazio was the Paracelsian charm to drive 
 away spirits that haunt any house. There is a passage in De 
 Consolatione (Opera, torn. i. p. 600) which gives Fazio's view of 
 happiness after death : " Memineram patrem meum, Facium 
 Cardanum, cum viveret, in ore semper habuisse, se mortem optare, 
 quod nullum suavius tempus experiretur, qua id in quo profundissime 
 dormiens omnium quae in hac vita fiunt expers esset." 
 
 2 Cardan gives his impressions of musicians : " Unde nostra 
 aetate neminem ferme musicum invenias, qui non omni redundat 
 vitiorum genere. Itaque hujusmodi musica maximo impedimento 
 non solum pauperi et negotioso viro est, sed etiam omnibus general- 
 iter. Quin etiam virorum egregiorum nostrae aetatis neminem 
 musicum agnovimus, Erasmum, Alciatum, Budaeum, Jasonem, 
 Vesalium, Gesnerum. At vero quod domum everterit meam, 
 si dicam, vera fatebor meo more. Nam et pecuniae non levem 
 jacturam feci, et quod majus est, filiorum mores corrupi. Sunt 
 enim plerique ebrii, gulosi, procaces, inconstantes, impatientes, 
 stolidi, inertes, omnisque libidinis genere coinquinati. Optimi 
 quique inter illos stulti sunt." De Utilitate, p. 362. 
 
1 64 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 After lamenting the vast amount of time he has wasted 
 over the game of chess, he goes on : " But the play with 
 the dice, an evil far more noxious, found its way into my 
 house ; and, after my sons had learned to play the same, 
 my doors always stood open to dicers. I can find no 
 excuse for this practice except the trivial one, that, what 
 I did, I did in the hope of relieving the poverty of my 
 children." 1 In a home of this sort, ruled by a father who 
 was assuredly more careful of his work in the study and 
 class-room than of his duties as paterfamilias, it is not 
 wonderful that the two young men, Gian Battista and 
 Aldo, should grow up into worthless profligates. It has 
 been recorded how Cardan, during a journey to Genoa, 
 wrote a Book of Precepts for his children, 2 a task the 
 memory of which afterwards wrung from him a cry of 
 despair. There never was compiled a more admirable 
 collection of maxims ; but, excellent as they were, it was 
 not enough to write them down on paper; and the young 
 men, if ever they took the trouble to read them, must 
 have smiled as they called to mind the difference between 
 their father's practices and the precepts he had composed 
 for their guidance. Furthermore, he had written at 
 length, in the De Consolatione, on the folly which parents 
 for the most part display in the education of their 
 children. " They show their affection in such foolish 
 wise, that it would be nearer the mark to say they hate, 
 rather than love, their offspring. They bring them up 
 not to follow virtue, but to occupy themselves with all 
 manner of hurtful things ; not to learning, but to riot ; 
 not to the worship of God, but to foster in them the 
 
 1 De Vita Propria^ ch. xiii. p. 45 . 
 
 2 " Quid profuit base tua industria, quis infelicior in filiis ? quorum 
 alter male periit : alter nee regi potest nee regere?" Opera, torn, 
 i. p. 109. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 165 
 
 desire to drain the cup of lustful pleasure ; not for the 
 life eternal, but to the enticements of lechery." 1 
 
 At this time Gian Battista had gained the doctorate of 
 medicine at Pavia, and had made his contribution to 
 medical knowledge by the publication of an insignificant 
 tract, De cibis foetidis non edendis. Cardan was evidently 
 full of hope for his elder son's career, but Aldo seems to 
 have been a trouble from the first. Yet, in casting Aldo's 
 horoscope (probably at the time of his birth) Cardan pre- 
 dicts for him a flourishing future. 2 Never was there made 
 a worse essay in prophecy. Aldo's childhood had been 
 a sickly one. He had well-nigh died of convulsions, and 
 later on he had been troubled with dysentery, abscesses 
 of the brain, and a fever which lasted six months. More- 
 over, he could not walk till he was three years old. With 
 a weakly body, his nature seems to have put forth all 
 sorts of untoward growths. There is a story which Naud6 
 brings forward as part of his indictment against Cardan, 
 that the father being irritated beyond endurance by some 
 ill conduct of his younger son during supper, cut off his 
 ear by way of punishment. It was a most barbarous 
 act ; one going far beyond the range of any tradition of 
 the early patria potestas, which may have yet lingered in 
 Italy ; and scarcely calculated to bring about reformation 
 in the youth thus punished. In any case, Aldo went on 
 from bad to worse ; at one time his father found it neces- 
 sary to place him under restraint, and the last record of 
 him is that one in Cardan's testament, by which he was 
 disinherited. 
 
 Gian Battista's failings were doubtless grave and 
 
 1 Opera, torn. i. p. 614. 
 
 " In casteris erit elegans, splendidus, humanus, gravis et qui ab 
 omnibus, potentioribusque, prsesertim probetur," Geniturarum 
 Exempla^ p. 464. 
 
166 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 numerous, but he had at least sufficient industry to 
 qualify himself as a physician. He was certainly 
 his father's favourite child, and on this account the 
 eulogies written of him in those dark hours when 
 Cardan's reason was reeling under the accumulated 
 blows of private grief and public disgrace, must be 
 accepted with caution. There is no evidence to show 
 he was in intellect anything like the budding genius 
 his father deemed him; as to conduct and manner of 
 life, his carriage was exactly what the majority of 
 youths, brought up in a similar fashion, would have 
 adopted. There must have been something in the 
 young man's humours which from the first made his 
 father apprehensive as to the future, for Cardan soon came 
 to see that an early marriage would be the surest safe- 
 guard for Gian Battista's future. With his mind bent on 
 this scheme, he pointed out to his son various damsels 
 of suitable station, any one of whom he would be ready 
 to welcome into his family, but Gian Battista always 
 found some excuse for declining matrimony. He de- 
 clared that he was too closely engaged with his work ; 
 and, over and beyond this, it would not be seemly to 
 bring home a bride into a house like their own, full of 
 young men, for Cardan, as usual, had several pupils 
 living with him. It was at the end of 1557 that the 
 first forebodings of misfortune appeared. To Cardan, 
 according to custom, they came in the form of a portent, 
 for he records how he lay awake at midnight on December 
 20, and was suddenly conscious that his bed was shaking. 
 He at once attributed this to a shock of an earthquake, 
 and in the morning he demanded of the servant, Simone 
 Sosia, who occupied the truckle bed in the room, whether 
 he had felt the same. Simone replied that he had, 
 whereupon Cardan, as soon as he arose, went to the 
 
JEROME CARDAN 167 
 
 piazza, and asked of divers persons he met there, whether 
 they had also been disturbed, but no one had felt anything 
 of the shock he alluded to. He went home, and while the 
 family were at table, a messenger, sent, as he afterwards 
 records, by a certain woman of the town, 1 entered the 
 room, and told him that his son was going to be married 
 immediately after breakfast. Cardan asked who the bride 
 might be, but the messenger said he knew not, and 
 departed. It is not quite clear whether Gian Battista 
 was present or not, but as soon as ever the messenger 
 had departed, Cardan let loose an indignant outburst 
 over his son's misconduct, reproaching him with undutiful 
 secresy, and setting forth how he had introduced to him 
 four young ladies of good family, of whom two were 
 certainly enamoured of him. Any one of the four would 
 have been acceptable as a daughter-in-law, but he declared 
 that now he would insist upon having full information as 
 to the antecedents of any other bride his son might have 
 selected, before admitting her to the shelter of his roof. 
 Over and over again had he counselled Gian Battista 
 that he must on no account marry in haste, or without 
 his advice, or without making sure that his income would 
 be sufficient to support the responsibilities of the married 
 state ; rather than this should happen, he would willingly 
 allow the young man to keep a mistress in the house for 
 the sake of offspring, for he desired beyond all else to 
 rear grandchildren from Gian Battista, because he nursed 
 the belief that, as the son resembled his grandfather 
 Fazio, so the son's children would resemble their grand- 
 father himself. When he was questioned, Gian Battista 
 declared he knew nothing about the report, and was fully 
 as astonished as his father ; but two days later Gian 
 Battista's own servant came to the house, and announced 
 1 " A scorto nuntius venit." De Utilitate^ p. 833. 
 
i6S JEROME CARDAN 
 
 that his master had been married that same morning, 1 
 but that he knew not the name of the bride. Cardan 
 now ascertained that Gian Battista's disinclination for 
 matrimony had arisen from the fact that he had been 
 amusing himself with a girl who was nothing else than 
 an attractive and finely-dressed harlot, named Brandonia 
 Seroni, the last woman in all Milan whom he could with 
 decency receive into his house. And the pitiful story 
 was not yet complete. In marrying her the foolish youth 
 had burdened himself with her mother, two or more 
 sisters, and three brothers, the last-named being rough 
 fellows without any calling but that of common soldiers. 
 The character of the girl herself may be judged by the 
 answer given by her father Evangelista Seroni to Cardan 
 during the subsequent trial. When Seroni was asked 
 whether he had given his daughter as a virgin in marriage, 
 he answered frankly in the negative. 
 
 Cardan at once made up his mind to shut his door 
 upon the newly-married pair; but the unconquerable 
 tenderness he felt for Gian Battista urged him on to 
 send to the young man all the ready money he had 
 saved. After two years of married life, two children, a 
 boy and a girl, were born : husband and wife alike were 
 . in ill health, and every day brought its domestic quarrel. 
 In the meantime sinister whispers were heard, set going 
 in the first instance by the mother and sister of Bran- 
 donia, that Gian Battista was the father neither of the 
 first nor of the second child. They even went so far as 
 to designate the men to whom they rightly belonged, 
 
 1 This incident is taken from the De Utilitate, which was written 
 soon after the events chronicled. The account given in the De 
 Vita Propria, written twenty years later, differs in some details. 
 " Venio domum, accurrit famulus admodum tristis, nunciat Johannem 
 Baptistam duxisse uxorem Brandoniam Seronam." De Vita 
 Propria, ch. xli. p. 147. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 169 
 
 and contrived that this rumour should come to the ears 
 of the injured husband. The consequence of their 
 malignant tale-bearing was a quarrel more violent than 
 ever, and the rise of a resolution in Gian Battista's mind 
 to rid himself at all hazard of the accursed burden he 
 had bound upon his shoulders. 
 
 Until the end of 1559 Cardan continued to live in 
 Milan, vexed no doubt by the ever-present spectacle of 
 the wretched case into which his beloved son had fallen. 
 He records how the young wife, unknown to her 
 husband, handed over to her father the wedding-ring 
 which he (Cardan) had given to his son, along with a piece 
 of silken stuff, in order to pledge them for money. This 
 outrage, joined to the certain conviction that his wife 
 was false to him, proved a provocation beyond the limits 
 of Gian Battista's patience, and finally incited him to 
 make a criminal attempt upon Brandonia's life. Hitherto 
 he had been earnest enough in his desire to rid himself 
 of his wife so long as she raged against him ; but, on the 
 restoration of peace, his anger against her would vanish. 
 Now he had lost all patience ; he laid his plans advisedly, 
 and set to work to execute them by enlisting the co- 
 operation of the servant who had been with him ever 
 since his marriage, and by taking to live with him in 
 his own house Seroni, his wife, and son and daughter. 1 
 It cannot be said that the would-be murderer displayed 
 at this juncture any of the traditional Italian craft in 
 setting about his deadly task. The day before the 
 attempt was made he took out of pawn the goods 
 which Evangelista Seroni had pledged, and promised his 
 servant a gift of clothes and money if he would compass 
 
 1 Cardan in describing this action of Gian Battista, who was 
 then determined to murder his wife, says of him : " Erat enim 
 natura clemens admodum et gratus." De Utilitate> p. 834. 
 
170 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 the death of Brandonia, who was still ailing from the 
 effects of her second confinement. To this suggestion 
 the servant, who had also warned Gian Battista of his 
 wife's misconduct, at once assented. 
 
 But even on the very day when he had fully deter- 
 mined to make his essay in murder he vacillated again 
 and again, and it seemed likely that Brandonia would 
 once more be reprieved. When he entered her bed- 
 chamber, full of his resolve to strike for freedom, he found 
 her lying gravely ill with an attack of fever, shivering 
 violently, and cold at the extremities. His anger forth- 
 with vanished, and his hand was stayed ; but as if urged 
 on by ruthless fate, the mother-in-law, and the sister, and 
 Brandonia herself, ill as she was, attacked Gian Battista 
 with the foulest abuse and reproaches ; this was the last 
 straw. He went out and sought his servant, and told 
 the fellow at once to make a cake and put a poison 
 therein. The date of this fatal action was some day 
 early in 1560. 
 
 On October i, 1559, Cardan had left Milan, and 
 gone back to Pavia to resume his work as professor, 
 taking Aldo with him. He threw himself into the dis- 
 charge of his office and the life of the city with his 
 customary ardour. Over and above his work of teach- 
 ing he completed his treatise De Secretis, and likewise 
 found time to hold a long disputation on the decisions 
 of Galen with Andrea Camutio, one of the most illus- 
 trious physicians of the age. Concerning this episode 
 he writes : " In disputation I showed myself so keen of 
 wit that all men marvelled at the instances I brought 
 forward, but for a long time no one ventured to put me 
 to the proof. Thus I escaped the trouble of any such 
 undertaking until two accidents both unforeseen in- 
 volved me therein. At Pavia, Branda Porro, my whilom 
 
JEROME CARDAN 171 
 
 teacher in Philosophy, interrupted me one day when I 
 was disputing with Camutio 1 on some matter of Philo- 
 sophy, for, as I have said before, my colleagues were 
 wont to lead me on to argue in philosophy because they 
 were well assured that it would be vain to try to get the 
 better of me in Medicine. Now Branda began by 
 advancing Aristotle as an authority, whereupon I, when 
 he brought out his citation, said, * Take care, you have 
 left out the "non" which should stand after "album"* 
 Then Branda contradicted me, and I, spitting out the 
 phlegm with which I am often troubled, told him quietly 
 that he was in the wrong. He sent for the Codex in great 
 rage, and when it was brought I asked that it might be 
 given to me. I then read out the words just as they 
 stood ; but he, as if he suspected that I was reading 
 falsely, snatched the volume out of my hands, and de- 
 clared that I was puting a cheat upon my hearers. When 
 he came to the word in dispute he held his tongue forth- 
 with, and all the others looked at me in amazement." 2 
 
 It is certain that Cardan was still vexed in mind by 
 the trouble he had left behind him at Milan. If he had 
 not forgiven Gian Battista, he was full of kindly thought 
 
 1 " Triduana ilia disceptatio Papiae cum Camutio instituta, pub- 
 licata apud Senatum : ipse primo argumento primas diei siluit." 
 De Vita Propria, ch. xii. p. 37. This does not exactly tally with 
 Camutio's version. With regard to Cardan's assertion that his 
 colleagues hesitated to meet him in medical discussion it may be 
 noted that Camutio printed a book at Paviain 1563, with the follow- 
 ing title : " Andraeae Camutii disputationes quibus Hieronymi Car- 
 dani magni nominis viri conclusiones infirmantur, Galenus ab 
 ejusdem injuria vindicatur, Hippocratis praeterea aliquot loca dili- 
 gentius multo quam unquam alias explicantur." In his version (De 
 Vita Propria, ch. xii. p. 37) Cardan inquires sarcastically : " Habentur 
 ejusdem imagines quaedam typis excusas in Camutii monumentis." 
 
 2 De Vita Propria, ch. xii. p. 39. The Third Book of the 
 Theonoston ( Opera, torn. ii. p. 403) is in the form of a disputation, 
 " De animi immortalite," with this same Branda. 
 
1 72 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 of him. He sent him from Pavia a new silk cloak, such 
 as physicians wear, so that he might make a better 
 show in his calling, and doubtless continued his supplies 
 of money. Just a week before the quarrel last recorded, 
 Aldo, against his father's wish, left Pavia and returned 
 to Milan. Cardan used every argument he could bring 
 forward to keep his younger son with him, but in vain ; 
 and, as he was unwilling to put constraint upon him, 
 Aldo departed. Cardan says that he was within an 
 ace of going with him, for the University was then in 
 vacation : then the crowning catastrophe might have 
 been averted, but the same fate which was driving on 
 the son to destruction, kept the father at Pavia. Thus 
 it happened that Aldo was an inmate of his brother's 
 house when the poisoned cake was made. Cardan has 
 written down a detailed account of the perpetration of 
 this squalid tragedy, and no clearer presentation can be 
 given than the one which his own words supply. 
 
 He writes : " Thus my son and the servant went 
 together to make the cake, and the servant put therein 
 secretly some of the poison which had been given him. 
 After the cake had been made, a small piece was given 
 to my son's wife, who was very ill at the time, but her 
 stomach rejected it at once. Her mother ate some of 
 it, and likewise vomited after taking it. Though Gian 
 Battista saw what happened he did not believe that the 
 cake was really poisoned, for two reasons. First, because 
 he had not, in truth, ordered that the poison should be 
 mixed therewith ; and second, because his brother-in-law 
 (Bartolomeo Sacco) had said to him, before the cake 
 was finished, ' See that you make it big enough, for I 
 also am minded to taste it.' Next he gave some to his 
 father-in-law, who straightway vomited, and complained 
 of a pricking of the tongue. He warned my son ; but 
 
JEROME CARDAN 173 
 
 he, still holding that the cake was harmless, ate thereof 
 somewhat greedily ; and, after having been sick, had to 
 lie by for some time. On the second day after this Gian 
 Battista, and his brother, and the servant as well were 
 taken in hold : and on the Sunday following I, having 
 been informed of what had happened, went to Milan in 
 great anxiety as to what I should do." 
 
 The news which had been brought to Cardan at Pavia 
 told him, over and beyond what is written above, that 
 his son's wife was dead, poisoned as every one believed 
 through having eaten the cake, which had caused nausea 
 and pain to every one else who had tasted it. 1 The 
 catastrophe was accompanied by the usual portents. 
 Some weeks previous to the attempt Gian Battista had 
 chanced to walk out to the Porta Tonsa, clad in the 
 smart silk gown which his father had recently given 
 him, and as he was passing a butcher's shop, a certain 
 pig, one of a drove which was there, rose up out of the 
 mud and attacked the young physician and befouled his 
 gown. The butcher and his men, to whom the thing 
 seemed portentous, drove off the hog with staves, but 
 this they could only do after the beast had weaned 
 itself, and after Gian Battista had gone away. Again, 
 at the beginning of February following, while Cardan 
 was in residence as a Professor at Pavia, he chanced to 
 look at the palm of his hand, and there, at the root of 
 the third finger of the right hand, he beheld a mark like 
 a bloody sword. That same evening a messenger 
 
 1 In his defence at the trial Cardan affirmed that, while Bran- 
 donia was lying sick from eating the cake, her mother and the nurse 
 quarrelled and fought, and finally fell down upon the sick woman. 
 When the fight was over Brandonia was dead. In Opera, torn. ii. 
 p. 3 1 1 ( Theonoston, lib. i.) he writes : " Obiit ilia non veneno, sed 
 vi morbi atque Fato quo tarn inclytus juvenis morte sua, omnia 
 turbare debuerat." 
 
174 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 arrived from Milan with the news of his son's arrest, 
 and a letter from his son-in-law, begging him to come 
 at once. The mark on his hand grew and grew for 
 fifty-three days, gradually mounting up the finger, until 
 the last fatal day, when it extended to the tip of the 
 finger, and shone bright like fiery blood. The morning 
 after Gian Battista's execution the mark had almost 
 vanished, and in a day or two no sign of it remained. 
 
 Cardan hurried to Milan to hear from Bartolomeo 
 Sacco, his son-in-law, the full extent of the calamity. 
 Probably there were few people in the city who did not 
 regard Gian Battista as a worthless fellow, whose death 
 would be a gain to the State and a very light loss to his 
 immediate friends, but Cardan was not of this mind. 
 He turned his back upon his professional engagements 
 at Pavia, and threw himself, heart and soul, into the fight 
 for his son's life. He could not make up his mind as to 
 Gian Battista's recent conduct; if he ate of the cake, 
 he surely could not have put in poison himself, or 
 directed others to do so ; if, on the other hand, he had 
 poisoned the cake, Cardan feared greatly that, in the 
 simplicity of his nature, he would assuredly let his 
 accusers know what he had done. And his mind was 
 greatly upset by the prodigies of which he had recently 
 had experience. For some reason or other he did 
 not visit the accused in prison, or give him any advice 
 as to what course he should follow, a piece of neglect 
 which he cites as a reproach against himself after- 
 wards ; but certain associates of Gian Battista, and 
 his fellow-captives as well, urged him to assert his 
 innocence, a course which Cardan recognized as the 
 only safe one. At the first examination the accused 
 followed this counsel ; at the second he began to waver 
 when the servant deposed that his master had given him 
 
JEROME CARDAN 175 
 
 a certain powder to mix with Brandonia's food in order 
 to increase her flow of milk ; and, later on, when 
 confronted with the man from whom he had received 
 the poison, he confessed all ; and, simpleton as he was, 
 admitted that for two months past his mind had been 
 set upon the deed, and that on two previous occasions 
 he had attempted to administer to her the noxious drug 
 against the advice of his servant. From the first Cardan 
 had placed his hopes of deliverance in the intervention 
 of the Milanese Governor, the Duca di Sessa, who had 
 not long ago consulted him as physician, 1 but the Duke 
 refused to interfere. The intervention of an executive 
 officer in'the procedure of a Court of Justice was no rare 
 occurrence at that period, and Cardan was deeply disap- 
 pointed at the squeamishness or indolence of his whilom 
 patient. He records afterwards how the Duke met his 
 full share of the calamities which fell upon all those who 
 were concerned in Gian Battista's condemnation ; 2 and 
 in the Dialogus Tetim> a work which he wrote immedi- 
 ately after the trial, he bewails afresh the inaction of 
 this excellent ruler and the consequent loss of his son. 3 
 
 For twenty days and more, while Gian Battista lay in 
 prison, Cardan, almost mad with apprehension and 
 suspense, spent his time studying in the library at 
 Milan. Sitting there one day, he heard a warning voice 
 which told him that the thing he most feared had indeed 
 
 1 " Vocatus sum enim ad Ducem Suessanum ex Ticinensi 
 Academia accepique C. aureos coronatos et dona ex serico." De 
 Vita Propria, ch. xl. p. 1 38. 
 
 2 De Vita Propria, ch. xli. p. 153. 
 
 3 Opera^ torn. i. p. 671. He cites the names of former Governors 
 of Milan and other patrons, many of them harsh men, and not one as 
 kind and beneficent as the Duca di Sessa ; to wit Antonio Leva, 
 Cardinal Caracio, Alfonso d'Avalos, Ferrante Gonzaga, the Cardinal 
 of Trent, and the Duca d'Alba. Yet the rule of his best friend 
 brought him his worst misfortune. 
 
176 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 come to pass. He felt that his heart was broken, and, 
 springing up, he rushed out into the court, where he met 
 certain of the Palavicini, the friends with whom he was 
 staying, and cried out, " Alas, alas, he was indeed privy 
 to the death of his wife, and now he has confessed it all, 
 therefore he will be condemned to death and beheaded." 
 Then having caught up a garment he went out to the 
 piazza, and, before he had gone half-way he met his son- 
 in-law, who asked him in sorrowful tones whither he was 
 going. Cardan answered that he was troubled with 
 apprehensions lest Gian Battista should have confessed 
 his crime, whereupon Bartolomeo Sacco told him that 
 what he feared had indeed come to pass. Gian Battista 
 had admitted the truth of the charge against him : he 
 was ultimately put on his trial before the Senate of 
 Milan, 1 the President of the Court being one Rigone, a 
 man whom Cardan afterwards accused of partiality and 
 of a hostile bias towards the prisoner. Cardan himself 
 stood up to defend his son ; but with a full confession 
 staring him in the face, he was sorely puzzled to fix 
 upon a line of defence. This he perceived must of 
 necessity be largely rhetorical ; and, after he had grasped 
 the entire situation, he set to work to convince the Court 
 on two main points, first, that Gian Battista was a youth 
 of simple guileless character ; and, second, there was no 
 proof that Brandonia had died of poison. A physician 
 of good repute, Vincenzo Dinaldo, swore that she had 
 died of fever (lipyria), and not from the effect of poison ; 
 and five others, men of the highest character, declared 
 that she bore no signs of poison, either externally 
 or internally. Her tongue and extremities and her 
 body were not blackened, nor was the stomach swollen, 
 
 1 There is a full account of the trial in an appendix to the De 
 Utilitate ex Adversis Capienda (Basel, 1561). It is not included in 
 the edition hitherto cited. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 177 
 
 nor did the hair and nails show any signs of falling, 
 nor were the tissues eaten away. In the opening 
 of his defence Cardan attempted to discredit the 
 character of Brandonia. He showed how great were 
 the injuries and provocations which Gian Battista had 
 received from her, and that she was a dissolute wanton ; 
 her father himself, when under examination, having 
 refused to say that she was a virgin when she left hjs 
 house to be married. He claimed justification for the 
 husband who should slay his wife convicted of adultery ; 
 and here, in this case, Brandonia was convicted by her 
 own confession. He maintained that, if homicide is to 
 be committed at all, poison is preferable to the knife, 
 and then he went on to weave a web of ineffectual 
 casuistry in support of his view, which moved the Court 
 to pity and contempt. He cited the Lex Cornelia, which 
 doomed the common people to the arena, and the 
 patricians to exile, and claimed the penalty last-named 
 as the one fitting to the present case. 1 Then he 
 proceeded to show that the woman had really died from 
 natural causes; for, even granting that she had swallowed 
 arsenic in the cake, she had vomited at once, and the 
 poison would have no time to do its work ; moreover 
 there was no proof that Gian Battista had given specific 
 directions to anybody to mix poison with the ingredients 
 of the cake. The most he had done was to utter some 
 vague words thereanent to his servant, who forthwith 
 took the matter into his own hands. 2 If Gian Battista 
 
 1 Laudabatur ejus benignitas ac simul factum lo. Petri Solarii 
 tabellionis, qui cum filium spurium convictum haberet de veneficio, 
 in duas sorores legitimas, solum haereditatis consequendae causa, satis 
 habuit damnasse ilium ad triremes." De Vita Propria^ ch. x. p. 33. 
 
 2 " Evasit nuper ob constantiam in tormentis famulus filii mei, 
 qui pretio venenum dederat dominae sine causa : periit filius meus, 
 qui nee jusserat dari." De UtiUtate^ p. 339. 
 
 N 
 
i 7 8 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 had known, if he had merely been suspicious that the 
 cake was poisoned, would he have let a crumb of it pass 
 his lips ; and if any large quantity of poison had been 
 present, would he and the other persons who had eaten 
 thereof have recovered so quickly ? Cardan next went 
 on to argue that, whatever motive may have swayed 
 Gian Battista at this juncture, it could not have been 
 the deliberate intent to kill his wife, because forsooth the 
 wretched youth was incapable of deliberate action of 
 any sort. He could never keep in the same mood for 
 four-and-twenty hours at a stretch. He nursed alter- 
 nately in his heart vengeance and forgiveness, changing 
 as discord or peace ruled in his house. Cardan showed 
 what a life of misery the wretched youth had passed 
 since his marriage. Had this life continued, the finger of 
 shame would have been pointed at him, he must have 
 lost his status as a member of his profession, and have 
 been cut off from the society of all decent people ; nay, 
 he would most likely have died by the hand of one 
 or other of his wife's paramours. This was to show 
 how powerful was the temptation to which the husband 
 was exposed, and again he sang the praises of poison as 
 an instrument of "removal"; because if effectively 
 employed, it led to no open scandal. 
 
 He next brought forward the simple and unsophisti- 
 cated character of the accused, and the physical afflic- 
 tions which had vexed him all his life, giving as 
 illustrations of his son's folly the headlong haste with 
 which he had rushed into a marriage, his folly in giving 
 an ineffectual dose, if he really meant to poison his wife, 
 in letting his plot be known to his servant, and in 
 confessing. Lastly, Cardan had in readiness one of his 
 favourite portents to lay before the Court. When 
 Brandonia's brother had come into the house and found 
 
JEROME CARDAN 179 
 
 his father and sister sick through eating the cake, he 
 suspected foul play and rushed at Gian Battista and at 
 Aldo who was also there, and threatened them with his 
 sword ; but before he could harm them he fell down in 
 a fit, his hand having been arrested by Providence. Pro- 
 vidence had thus shown pity to this wretched youth, and 
 now Cardan besought the Senate to be equally merciful. 
 
 Cardan's pleas were all rejected ; indeed such issue 
 was inevitable from the first, if the Senate of Milan were 
 not determined to abdicate the primary functions of a 
 judicial tribunal. Gian Battista was condemned to 
 death, but a strange condition was annexed to the 
 sentence, to wit that his life would be spared, if the 
 prosecutors, the Seroni family, could be induced to 
 consent. But their consent was only to be gained by the 
 payment of a sum of money entirely beyond Cardan's 
 means, their demand having been stimulated through 
 some foolish boasting of the family wealth by the 
 condemned prisoner. 1 Cardan was powerless to arrest 
 the course of the law, and Gian Battista was executed 
 in prison on the night of April 7, 1560. 
 
 In the whole world of biographic record it would be 
 hard to find a figure more pathetic than that of Cardan 
 fighting for the life of his unworthy son. No other 
 episode of his career wins from the reader sympathy 
 half so deep. The experience of these terrible days 
 certainly shook still further off its balance a mind not 
 over steady in its calmest moments. Cardan wrote 
 
 1 Gian Battista seems to have boasted about the family wealth, 
 and thus stirred up the Seroni to demand an excessive and 
 impossible sum. " Haec et alia hujusmodi cum protulissem, non 
 valere, nisi eousque, ut decretum sit, si impetrare pacem potuis- 
 sem vitas parceretur. Sed non potuit filii stultitia, qui dum 
 jactat opes quae non sunt, illi quod non erat exigunt.'' De Vita 
 Propria, ch. x. p. 34. 
 
i8o JEROME CARDAN 
 
 voluminously and laboriously over Gian Battista's fate, 
 but in his dirges and lamentations he never lets fall an 
 expression of detestation or regret with regard to the 
 crime itself: all his soul goes out in celebrating the 
 charm and worth of his son, and in moaning over the 
 ruin of mind, body, and estate which had fallen upon 
 him through this cruel stroke of adverse fate. When 
 he sat down to write the De Vita Propria, Cardan was 
 strongly possessed with the belief that all through his 
 career he had been subject to continuous and extra- 
 ordinary persecution at the hands of his enemies. The 
 entire thirtieth chapter is devoted to the description of 
 these plots and assaults. In his earlier writings he 
 attributes his calamities to evil fate and the influences 
 of the stars ; his wit was indeed great, and assuredly it 
 was allied to madness, so it is not impossible that these 
 personal foes who dogged his steps were largely the 
 creatures of an old man's monomaniacal fancies. The 
 persecution, he affirms, began to be so bitter as to be 
 almost intolerable after the condemnation of Gian 
 Battista. "Certain members of the Senate afterwards 
 admitted (though I am sure they would be loth that 
 men should hold them capable of such a wish) that they 
 condemned my son to death in the hope that I might 
 be killed likewise, or at least might lose my wits, and 
 the powers above can bear witness how nearly one of 
 these ills befell me. I would that you should know 
 what these times were like, and what practices were in 
 fashion. I am well assured that I never wrought offence 
 to any of these men, even by my shadow. I took advice 
 how I might put forward a defence of some kind on my 
 son's behalf, but what arguments would have prevailed 
 with minds so exasperated against me as were theirs ? ;} 1 
 1 De Vita Propria^ ch. x. p. 33. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 CARDAN had risen to high and well-deserved fame, 
 and this fact alone might account for the existence of 
 jealousy and ill-feeling amongst certain of those whom 
 he had passed in the race. Some men, it is true, rise 
 to eminence without making more than a few enemies, 
 but Cardan was not one of these. His foes must have 
 been numerous and truculent, the assault they delivered 
 must have been deadly and overwhelming to have 
 brought to such piteous wreck fortunes which seemed 
 to rest upon the solid ground of desert. The public 
 voice might accuse him of folly, but assuredly not of 
 crime ; he was the victim and not the culprit ; his 
 skill as a physician was as great as ever, but these 
 considerations weighed little with the hounds who 
 were close upon his traces. Now that the tide of 
 his fortune seemed to be on the ebb they gathered 
 around him. He writes: "And this, in sooth, was the 
 chief, the culminating misfortune of my life : forasmuch 
 as I could not with any show of decency be kept in my 
 office, nor could I be dismissed without some more 
 valid excuse, I could neither continue to reside in 
 Milan with safety, nor could I depart therefrom. As 
 I walked about the city men looked askance at me; 
 and whenever I might be forced to exchange words 
 with any one, I felt that I was a disgraced man. Thus, 
 being conscious that my company was unacceptable, I 
 
 181 
 
1 82 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 shunned my friends. I had no notion what I should do, 
 or whither I should go. I cannot say whether I was more 
 wretched in myself than I was odious to my fellows." 1 
 
 Cardan gathered a certain amount of consolation from 
 meditating over the ills which befell all those who were 
 concerned in Gian Battista's fate. The Senator Falcutius, 
 a man of the highest character in other respects, died 
 about four months later, exclaiming with his dying 
 breath that he was undone through the brutal ignorance 
 of a certain man, who had been eager for the death 
 sentence. One Hala shortly afterwards followed Fal- 
 cutius to the grave, having fallen sick with phthisis 
 immediately after the trial. Rigone, the President of 
 the Court, lost his wife, and gave her burial bereft of the 
 usual decencies of the last rite, a thing which Cardan 
 says he could not have believed, had he not been assured 
 of the same by the testimony of many witnesses. It 
 was reported too, that Rigone himself, though a man 
 of good reputation, was forced to feign death in order 
 to escape accusation on some charge or other. His only 
 son had died shortly before, so it might be said with 
 reason that his house was as it were thrown under an 
 evil spell by the avenging Furies of the youth whom he 
 had sent to die in a dungeon. Again, within a few days 
 the prosecutor himself, Evangelista Seroni, the man who 
 was the direct cause of his son-in-law's death, was thrown 
 into prison, and, having been deprived of his office of 
 debt collector, became a beggar. Moreover, the son 
 whom he specially loved was condemned to death in 
 Sicily, and died on the gallows. Public and private 
 calamity fell upon the Duca di Sessa, 2 the Governor of 
 
 1 De Vita Propria, ch. xxvii. p. 71. 
 
 2 "Quin etiam dominusac Princepsalioquingenerosus et humanus, 
 cum ipsum ob invidiam meam et accusatorum multitudinem dese- 
 
JEROME CARDAN 183 
 
 Milan, doubtless because he had allowed the law to take 
 its course. Indeed every person great or small who had 
 been concerned in Gian Battista's condemnation, was, 
 by Cardan's showing, overtaken by grave misfortune. 
 
 Cardan still held his Professorship at Pavia, and in 
 spite of the difficulties and embarrassments of his posi- 
 tion he went back to resume his work of teaching a few 
 days after the fatal issue of his son's trial and condem- 
 nation. By the pathetic simplicity of its diction the 
 following extract gives a vivid and piteous picture of 
 the utter desolation and misery into which he was cast : 
 it shows likewise that, after a lapse of fifteen years, the 
 memory of his shame and sorrow was yet green, and 
 that a powerful stimulus had been given to his super- 
 stitious fancies by the events lately chronicled. " In 
 the month of May, in the year MDLX, a time when 
 sleep had refused to come to me because of my grief for 
 my son's death : when I could get no relief from fasting 
 nor from the flagellation I inflicted upon my legs when 
 I rode abroad, nor from the game of chess which I then 
 played with Ercole Visconti, a youth very dear to me, 
 and like myself troubled with sleeplessness, I prayed 
 God to have pity upon me, because I felt that I must 
 needs die, or lose my wits, or at least give up my work 
 as Professor, unless I got some sleep, and that soon. 
 Were I to resign my office, I could find no other means 
 of earning my bread : if I should go mad I must become 
 a laughing-stock to all. I must in any case lavish what 
 
 ruisset, et ipse multis modis conflictatus est gravibus morbis, caede 
 propriae neptis a conjuge suo, litibus gravibus: turn etiam subsecuta 
 calamitas publica, Zotophagite insula amissa, classe regia dissipata." 
 De Vita Propria, ch. xli. p. 153. The island alluded to must 
 have been Lotophagites insula, an island near the Syrtes Minor 
 on the African coast, and the loss of the same probably refers to 
 some disaster during the Imperialist wars against the Moors. 
 
1 84 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 still remained of my patrimony, for at my advanced age 
 I could not hope to find fresh employment. Therefore 
 I besought God that He would send me death, which is 
 the lot of all men. I went to bed : it was already late, 
 and, as I must needs rise at four in the morning, I should 
 not have more than two hours' rest. Sleep, however, fell 
 upon me at once, and meseemed that I heard a voice 
 speaking to me out of the darkness. I could discern 
 naught, so it was impossible to say what voice it was, 
 or who was the speaker. It said, * What would you 
 have ? ' or ' What are you grieving over ? ' and added, 
 ' Is it that you mourn for your son's death ? ' I replied, 
 
 * Can you doubt this ? ' Then the voice answered, 
 
 * Take the stone which is hanging round your neck 
 and place it to your mouth, and so long as you hold 
 it there you will not be troubled with thoughts of 
 your son.' Here I awoke, and at once asked myself 
 what this beryl stone could have to do with sleep, but 
 after a little, when I found no other means of escape 
 from my trouble, I called to mind the words spoken of 
 a certain man : ' He hoped even beyond hope, and it 
 was accounted to him as righteousness ' (spoken of 
 Abraham), and put the stone in my mouth, whereupon 
 a thing beyond belief came to pass. In a moment all 
 remembrance of my son faded from my mind, and the 
 same thing happened when I fell asleep a second time 
 after being aroused." 1 
 
 The record of Cardan's life for the next two years is 
 a meagre one. His rest was constantly disturbed either 
 by the machinations of his foes or by the dread thereof, 
 the evil last-named being probably the more noxious of 
 the two. As long ago as 1557 he had begun the treatise 
 De Utilitate ex Adversis Capienda, a work giving evidence 
 1 De Vita Propria, ch. xliii. p. 160. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 185 
 
 of careful construction, and one which, as a literary per- 
 formance, takes the first rank. 1 This book had been put 
 aside, either through pressure of other work or family 
 troubles, but now the circumstances in which he found 
 himself seemed perfectly congenial for the elaboration 
 of a subject of this nature, so he set to work to finish it, 
 concluding with the chapter De Luctu, which has been 
 used largely as the authority for the foregoing narrative 
 of Gian Battista's crime and death. At this period, when 
 his mind was fully stored and his faculties adequately 
 disciplined for the production of the best work, he seems 
 to have realized with sharp regret that the time before 
 him was so short, and that whatever fresh fruit of know- 
 ledge he might put forth would prove of very slight 
 profit to him, as author. Writing of his replies given to 
 certain mathematical professors, who had sent him 
 problems for solution, he remarks that, although he may 
 have a happy knack of dispatching with rapidity any 
 work begun, he always begins too late. In his fifty- 
 eighth year he answered one of these queries, involving 
 three very difficult problems, within seven days ; a feat 
 which he judges to be a marvel : but what profit will it 
 bring him now ? If he had written this treatise when he 
 was thirty he would straightway have risen to fame and 
 fortune, in spite of his poverty, his rivals, and his 
 enemies. Then, in ten years' space, he would have 
 finished and brought out all those books which were now 
 lying unfinished around him in his old age ; and more- 
 over would have won so great gain and glory, that no 
 
 1 Cardan rates it as his best work on an ethical subject. Opera^ 
 torn i. p. 146. And on p. 115 he writes : " Utinam contigisset absol- 
 vere ante errorem filii ; neque enim ille errasset, nee errandi causam 
 aliquam habuisset : nee, etiamsi errasset, periisset." He also 
 quotes a letter full of sound and loving counsels which he had sent 
 to Gian Battista six months before he fell into the snare. 
 
1 86 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 farther good fortune would have remained for him to 
 ask for. Another work which he had begun about the 
 same time (1558) was the treatise on Dialectic, illus- 
 trated by geometrical problems and theorems, and like- 
 wise by the well-known logical catch lines Barbara 
 Celarent. During the summer vacation of 1561 he re- 
 turned to Milan, and began a Commentary on the 
 Anatomy of Mundinus, the recognized text-book of the 
 schools up to the appearance of Vesalius. In the pre- 
 face to this work he puts forward a vigorous plea for the 
 extended use of anatomy in reaching a diagnosis. 1 He 
 had likewise on hand the Theonoston, a set of essays on 
 Moral subjects written something in the spirit of Seneca; 
 and, after Gian Battista's death, he wrote the dialogue 
 Tetim, seu de Humanis Consiliis. In the year follow- 
 ing, 1561, a farther sorrow and trouble came upon 
 him by the death of the English youth, William, If he 
 was guilty of neglect in the case of this young man 
 and by his own confession he was he was certainly pro- 
 foundly grieved at his death. In the Argument to the 
 Dialogus de Morte he laments that he ever let the youth 
 leave his house without sending him back to England, 
 and tells how he was cozened by Daldo, the crafty 
 tailor, out of a premium of thirty-one gold crowns, in 
 return for which William was to be taught a trade. 
 " But during the summer, Daldo, who had a little farm in 
 the country, took the youth there and let him join in 
 the village games, and by degrees made him into a vine- 
 dresser. But if at any time it chanced that William's 
 services were also wanted at the tailor's shop, his master 
 would force him to return thereto in the evening (for the 
 farm was two miles distant), and sit sewing all the night. 
 Besides this the boy would go dancing with the villagers, 
 1 Opera,) torn. x. p. 129. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 187 
 
 and in the course of their merry-making he fell in love 
 with a girl. While I was living at Milan he was taken 
 with fever, and came to me ; but, for various reasons, I 
 did not give proper attention to him, first, because he 
 himself made light of his ailment ; second, because I 
 knew not that his sickness had been brought on by ex- 
 cessive toil and exposure to the sun ; and third, because, 
 when he had been seized with a similar distemper on 
 two or three occasions before this, he had always got 
 well within four or five days. Besides this I was then 
 in trouble owing to the running away of my son Aldo 
 and one of my servants. What more is there to tell ? 
 Four days after I had ordered him to be bled, mes- 
 sengers came to me in the night and begged me to go 
 and see him, for he was apparently near his end. He 
 was seized with convulsions and lost his senses, but I 
 battled with the disease and brought him round. I was 
 obliged to return to Pavia to resume my teaching, and 
 William, when he was well enough to get up, was forced 
 to sleep in the workshop by his master, who had been 
 bidden to a wedding. There he suffered so much from 
 cold and bad food that, when he was setting out for 
 Pavia to seek me, he was again taken ill. His unfeeling 
 master caused him to be removed to the poor-house, and 
 there he died the following morning from the violence 
 of the distemper, from agony of mind, and from the cold 
 he had suffered. Indeed I was so heavily stricken by 
 mischance that meseemed I had lost another son/' 
 
 It was partly as a consolation in his own grief, and 
 partly as a monument to the ill-fated youth, that Cardan 
 wrote the Dialogus de Morte, a work which contains 
 little of interest beyond the record of Cardan's impres- 
 sions of Englishmen already quoted. But it was beyond 
 hope that he should find adequate solace for the gnawing 
 
1 88 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 grief and remorse which oppressed him in this, or any 
 other literary work. He was ill looked upon at Milan, 
 but his position at Pavia seems to have been still more 
 irksome. He grew nervous as to his standing as a phy- 
 sician, for, with the powerful prejudice which had been 
 raised against him both as to his public and his private 
 affairs, he felt that a single slip in his treatment of any 
 particular case would be fatal to him. In Milan he did 
 meet with a certain amount of gratitude from the 
 wealthier citizens for the services he had wrought them ; 
 but in Pavia, his birthplace, the public mind was strongly 
 set against him; indeed in 1562 he was subjected to so 
 much petty persecution at the hands of the authorities 
 and of his colleagues, that he determined to give up his 
 Professorship at all cost. He describes at great length 
 one of the most notable intrigues against him. " Now 
 in dealing with the deadly snares woven against my life, 
 I will tell you of something strange which befell me. 
 During my Professorship at Pavia I was in the habit of 
 reading in my own house. I had in my household at 
 that time a woman to do occasional work, the youth 
 Ercole Visconti, two boys, and another servant. Of the 
 two boys, one was my amanuensis and well skilled in 
 music, and the other was a lackey. It was in 1562 that 
 I made up my mind to resign my office of teaching and 
 quit Pavia, a resolution which the Senate took in ill part, 
 and dealt with me as with a man transported with rage. 
 But there were two doctors of the city who strove with 
 all their might to drive me away : one a crafty fellow who 
 had formerly been a pupil of mine ; the other was the 
 teacher extraordinary in Medicine, a simple-minded man, 
 and, as I take it, not evil by nature ; but covetous and 
 ambitious men will stop at nothing, especially when the 
 prize to be won is an office held in high esteem. Thus, 
 
JEROME CARDAN 189 
 
 when they despaired of getting rid of me through the 
 action of the Senate what though I was petitioning to 
 be relieved of my duties they laid a plot to kill me, 
 not by the dagger for fear of the Senate and of possible 
 scandal, but by malignant craft. My opponent perceived 
 that he could not be promoted to the post of principal 
 teacher unless I should leave the place, and for this 
 reason he and his allies spread their nets from a distance. 
 In the first place, they caused to be written to me, in the 
 name of my son-in-law l and of my daughter as well, a 
 most vile and filthy letter telling how they were ashamed 
 of their kinship with me ; that they were ashamed 
 likewise for the sake of the Senate, and of the College ; 
 and that the authorities ought to take cognizance of the 
 matter and pronounce me unworthy of the office of 
 teacher and cause me to be removed therefrom forth- 
 with. Confounded at receiving such an impudent and 
 audacious reproof at the hands of my own kindred, I 
 knew not what to do or say, or what reply I should 
 make ; nor could I divine for what reason this unseemly 
 and grievous affront had been put upon me. It after- 
 wards came to light that the letter was written in order 
 to serve as an occasion for fresh attacks ; for, before 
 many days had passed, another letter came to me bear- 
 ing the name of one Fioravanti, written in the following 
 strain. This man was likewise shocked for the sake of 
 the city, the college, and the body of professors, seeing 
 that a report had been spread abroad that I was guilty 
 of abominable offences which cannot be named. He 
 would call upon a number of his friends to take steps to 
 compel me to consider the public scandal I was causing, 
 and would see that the houses where these offences were 
 committed should be pointed out. When I read this 
 1 Bartolomeo Sacco was evidently living at Pavia at this date. 
 
i 9 o JEROME CARDAN 
 
 letter I was as one stupefied, nor could I believe it was 
 the work of Fioravanti, whom I had hitherto regarded 
 as a man of seemly carriage and a friend. But this 
 letter and its purport remained fixed in my mind and 
 prompted me to reply to my son-in-law ; for I believed 
 no longer that he had aught to do with the letter which 
 professed to come from him ; indeed I ought never to 
 have harboured such a suspicion, seeing that both then 
 and now he has always had the most kindly care for me; 
 nor has he ever judged ill of me. 
 
 " I called for my cloak at once and went to Fioravanti, 
 whom I questioned about the letter. He admitted that 
 he wrote it, whereupon I was more than ever astonished, 
 for I was loth to suspect him of crooked dealing, much 
 more of any premeditated treachery. I began to reason 
 with him, and to inquire where all these wonderful 
 plans had been concocted, and then he began to waver, 
 and failed to find an answer. He could only put 
 forward common report, and the utterances of the 
 Rector of the Gymnasium, as the source of them." l 
 
 Cardan goes on to connect the foregoing incident, by 
 reasoning which is not very clear, with what he main- 
 tained to have been a veritable attempt against his life. 
 " The first act of the tragedy having come to an end, the 
 second began, and this threw certain light upon the first. 
 My foes made it their special care that I, whom they 
 held up as a disgrace to my country, to my family, to 
 the Senate, to the Colleges of Milan and Pavia, to the 
 Council of Professors, and to the students, should become 
 a member of the Accademia degli Affidati, a society in 
 which were enrolled divers illustrious theologians, two 
 Cardinals, and two princes, the Duke of Mantua, and the 
 Marquis Pescara. When they perceived how loth I 
 1 De Vita Rropria, ch. xxx. p. 83. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 191 
 
 was to take this step they began to threaten. What 
 was I to do, broken down by the cruel fate of my son, 
 and suffering every possible evil ? Finally I agreed, 
 induced by the promise they made me, that, in the 
 course of a few days, I should be relieved of my duties 
 as Professor ; but I did not then perceive the snare, or 
 consider how it was that they should now court the 
 fellowship of one whom, less than fifteen days ago, all 
 ranks of the College had declared to be a monster not 
 to be tolerated. Alas for faith in heaven, for the 
 barbarity of men, for the hatred of false friends, for that 
 shamelessness and cruelty more fell than serpent's bite ! 
 What more is there to tell ? The first time I entered 
 the room of the Affidati I saw that a heavy beam had 
 been poised above in such fashion that it might easily 
 fall and kill whatsoever person might be passing under- 
 neath. Whether this had been done by accident or 
 design I cannot say. But hereafter I attended as rarely 
 as possible, making excuses for my absence ; and, when 
 I did go, I went when no one looked for me, and out of 
 season, taking good heed of this trap the while. Where- 
 fore no evil befell me thereby, either because my foes 
 deemed it unwise to work such wickedness in public, or 
 because they had not finally agreed to put their scheme 
 in operation, or because they were plotting some fresh 
 evil against me. Another attempt was made a few 
 days later, when I was called to the ailing son of one 
 Piero Trono, a surgeon ; they placed high over the door 
 a leaden weight which might easily be made to fall, 
 pretending that it had been put there to hold up the 
 curtain. This weight did fall ; and, had it struck me, it 
 would certainly have killed me : how near I was to 
 death, God knows. Wherefore I began to be suspicious 
 of something I could not define, so greatly was my 
 
192 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 mind upset. Then a third attempt was made, which 
 was evident enough. A few days later, when they were 
 about to sing a new Mass, the same rascally crew came 
 to me, asking me whether I would lend them the 
 services of my two singing boys, for my enemies knew 
 well enough that these boys acted as my cup-bearers, 
 and over and beyond this they made an agreement with 
 my hired woman that she should give me poison. They 
 first went to Ercole and tried to persuade him to go 
 to the function ; and he, suspecting nothing, at first 
 promised his help ; but when he heard that his fellow 
 was to go likewise, he began to smell mischief and said, 
 'Only one of us knows music.' Then Fioravanti, a 
 blunt fellow, was so wholly set on getting them out of the 
 house that he said, ' Let us have both of you, for we 
 know that the other is also a musician ; and, though he 
 may not be one of the best, still he will serve to swell 
 the band of choristers.' Then Ercole said somewhat 
 vaguely that he would ask his master. He came to me, 
 having fathomed and laid bare the whole intention of 
 the plot, so that, if I had not been stark mad and stupid, 
 I might easily have seen through their design. Fifteen 
 days or so had passed when the same men once more 
 sought me out and begged me to let them have the two 
 boys to help them in the performance of a comedy. 
 Then Ercole came to me and said, ' Now in sooth the 
 riddle is plain to read ; they are planning to get all 
 your people away from your table, so that they may 
 kill you with poison ; nor are they satisfied with plot- 
 ting your death merely by tricks of this sort ; they are 
 determined to kill you by any chance which may offer." 1 
 How far these plots were real, and how far they 
 sprang from monomania it is impossible to say. Car- 
 1 De Vita Propria, ch. xxx. p. 86. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 193 
 
 dan's relations with his brother physicians had never 
 been of the happiest, and it is quite possible that a 
 set may have been made in the Pavian Academy to get 
 rid of a colleague, difficult to live with at the best, and 
 now cankered still more in temper by misfortune, and 
 likewise, in a measure, disgraced by the same. Sur- 
 rounded by annoyances such as these, and tormented 
 by the intolerable memories and associations of the last 
 few years, it is not wonderful that he should seek a way 
 out of his troubles by a change of scene and occupation. 
 As early as 1536 Cardan had had professional rela- 
 tions with certain members of the Borromeo family, 
 which was one of the most illustrious in Milan, and in 
 1560 Carlo Borromeo was appointed Archbishop of 
 Milan. There is no record of the date when Cardan first 
 made acquaintance with this generous patron, who was 
 the nephew of the reigning Pope, Pius IV., himself a 
 Milanese, but it is certain that Cardan had at an earlier 
 date successfully treated the mother of the future Cardinal, 1 
 wherefore it is legitimate to assume that the physician 
 was persona grata to the whole family. As soon as 
 Cardan had determined to withdraw from Pavia he 
 applied to the Cardinal, who had just made a magnificent 
 benefaction to Bologna in the form of the University 
 buildings. He espoused Cardan's interests at once, and 
 most opportunely, for the protection of a powerful per- 
 sonage was almost as needful at Bologna, as the sequel 
 shows, as it would have been at Pavia. It was evident 
 that Cardan had foes elsewhere than in Pavia; indeed the 
 early stages of the negotiation, which went on in refer- 
 ence to his transfer to Bologna, suggest a doubt whether 
 the change would bring him any advantage other than 
 the substitution of one set of enemies for another. He 
 1 De Vita Propria^ ch. xvii. p. 55. 
 
i 9 4 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 writes : " When I was about to be summoned to teach 
 at Bologna, some persons of that place who were envi- 
 ous of my reputation sent a certain officer (a getter-up 
 of petitions) to Pavia. Now this fellow, who never once 
 entered the class-room, nor had a word with any one of 
 my pupils, wrote, on what authority I know not, a 
 report in these words : ' Concerning Girolamo Cardano, 
 I am told that he taught in this place, but got no pupils, 
 always lecturing to empty benches : that he is a man of 
 evil life, ill regarded by all, and little less than a fool, 
 repulsive in his manners, and entirely unskilled in medi- 
 cine. After he had promulgated certain of his opinions 
 he found no one in the city who would employ him, nor 
 did he practise his art.' 
 
 " These words were read to the Senate by the mes- 
 senger on his return in the presence of the illustrious 
 Borromeo, the Pope's Legate to the city. The Senate 
 were upon the point of breaking off all further negotia- 
 tions, but while the man was reading his report, some 
 one present heard the words in which he declared that 
 I did not practise medicine. ' Hui ! ' he cried, ' I know 
 that is not true, for I myself have seen divers men of the 
 highest consideration going to him for help, and I 
 though I am not to be ranked with them have often con- 
 sulted him myself.' Then the Legate took up the parole 
 and said, 1 1 too bear witness that he cured my own mother 
 when she was given up by every one else/ Then the first 
 speaker suggested that probably the rest of the tale was 
 just as worthy of belief as this one statement, the Legate 
 agreeing thereto ; whereupon the messenger aforesaid 
 held his tongue and blushed for shame. Ultimately the 
 Senate determined to appoint me Professor for one year, 
 1 for,' they said, ' if he should prove to be the sort of 
 man the officer describes, or if his teaching should profit 
 
JEROME CARDAN 195 
 
 us nothing, we can let him go ; but if it be otherwise, 
 the contract may be ratified.' With regard to the salary, 
 over which a dispute had already arisen, the Legate 
 gave his consent, and the business came to an end. 
 
 " But, disregarding this settlement, my opponents urged 
 one of their number to wait upon me as a delegate from 
 the Senate, and this man would fain have added to the 
 terms already sanctioned by the Senate, others which I 
 could not possibly accept. He offered me a smaller 
 stipend, no teaching room was assigned to me, and no 
 allowance for travelling expenses. I refused to treat 
 with him, whereupon he was forced to depart, and to 
 return to me later on with the terms of my engagement 
 duly set forth." 1 
 
 It was in June 1562 that Cardan finally resigned his 
 position at Pavia, but it was not until some months 
 after this date that the final agreement with the 
 Bolognese Senate, lately referred to, was concluded, 
 and in the interim he was forced to suffer no slight 
 annoyance and persecution at the hands of his adver- 
 saries in Pavia, in Bologna, and in Milan as well. Just 
 before he resigned his Professorship he was warned by 
 the portentous kindling of a fire, seemingly dead, 2 that 
 fresh mischief was afoot, and he at once determined in 
 his mind that his foes had planned destruction against 
 him afresh. So impressed was he at this manifestation 
 that he swore he would not leave home on the day 
 following. "But early in the morning there came to 
 my house four or five of my pupils bidding me to a 
 feast, where all the chief Professors of the Gymnasium 
 and the Academy proposed to be present. I replied 
 
 1 De Vita Propria, ch. xvii. p. 54. 
 
 2 Ibid., ch. xxx. p. 88. There is also a long account of this 
 occurrence in Opera, torn. x. p. 459. 
 
196 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 that I could not come, whereupon they, knowing that 
 it was not my wont to dine in the middle of the day, 
 and deeming that it was on this score that I refused to 
 join them, said, ' Then for your sake we will make the 
 feast a supper.' I answered that I could not on any 
 account make one of their party, and then they de- 
 manded to know the cause of my refusal. I replied it 
 was because of a strange event which had befallen me, 
 and of a vow I had made thereanent. At this they 
 were greatly astonished, and two of them exchanged 
 significant glances, and they urged me again and again 
 that I should not be so firmly set upon marring so 
 illustrious a gathering by my absence, but I gave back 
 the same answer as before." 1 They came a second time, 
 but Cardan was not to be moved. He records, however, 
 that he did break his vow after all by going out after 
 dusk to see a poor butcher who was seriously ill. 
 
 It is hard to detect any evidence of deadly intent in 
 what seems, by contemporary daylight, to have been a 
 complimentary invitation to dinner ; but to the old 
 man, possessed as he was by hysterical terrors, this 
 episode undoubtedly foreshadowed another assault 
 against his life. He finds some compensation, however, 
 in once more recording the fact that all these disturbers 
 of his peace like the men who were concerned in Gian 
 Battista's condemnation came to a bad end. His 
 rival, who had taken his place as Professor, had not 
 taught in the schools more than three or four times 
 before he was seized with disease and died after three 
 months' suffering. " Upon him there lay only the sus- 
 picion of the charge, but I heard afterwards that a friend 
 of his was certainly privy to the deed of murder which 
 they had resolved to work upon me by giving me a cup 
 1 De Vita Propria^ ch. xxx. p. 89. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 197 
 
 of poisoned wine at the supper. In the same year died 
 Delfino, and a little while after Fioravanti." x 
 
 In July Cardan withdrew to Milan, where, to add to 
 his other troubles, he was seized with an attack of fever. 
 He was now thoroughly alarmed at the look of his 
 affairs. Many of his fears may have been imaginary, 
 but the burden of real trouble which he had to carry 
 was one which might easily bring him to the ground, 
 and, when once a man is down, the crowd has little pity 
 or scruple in trampling him to death. He set about to 
 review his position, and to spy out all possible sources 
 of danger. He writes : " I called to mind all the books I 
 had written, and, seeing that in them there were many 
 obscure passages upon which an unfavourable meaning 
 might be put by the malice of my enemies, I wrote to 
 the Council, submitting all my writings to its judgment 
 and will and pleasure. By this action I saved myself 
 from grave danger and disgrace in the future." 2 The 
 Council to which Cardan here refers was probably the 
 Congregation of the Index appointed by the Council at 
 Trent for the authoritative examination of all books 
 before allowing them to be read by the faithful. 
 Before the close of the Council (1563) these duties 
 had been handed over to the Pope (Pius IV.), who 
 published the revised and definite Roman Index in 
 1564. 
 
 1 De Vita Propria, ch. xxx. p. 90. 2 Opera, torn. x. p. 460. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 WHILE Cardan was lying sick at Milan, a messenger 
 came from Pavia, begging him to hasten thither to see 
 his infant grandson, who had been ailing when he left 
 Pavia, and was now much worse. The journey under 
 the burning sun of the hottest summer known for many 
 years aggravated his malady, but he brought the child 
 out of danger. He caught erysipelas in the face, 
 and to this ailment succeeded severe trouble with the 
 teeth. If it had not been for the fact that the time 
 of the new moon had been near, he says that he must 
 have submitted to blood-letting; but after the new 
 moon his health mended, and thus he escaped the two- 
 fold danger that of the disease, and that of the lancet. 
 He tells of an attempt made against his life by a servant 
 for the sake of robbery, an attempt which came very 
 near success ; and of a severe attack of gout in the knee. 
 After a month's confinement to his house he began to 
 practise Medicine ; and, finding patients in plenty, he 
 nourished a hope that Fortune had done her worst, and 
 that he might be allowed to repair his shattered fortunes 
 by the exercise of his calling, but the activity of his 
 adversaries which may or may not have been provoked 
 solely by malignity was unsleeping. He hints at 
 further attempts against his good name and his life, 
 and gives at length some painful details of another 
 
 198 
 
JEROME CARDAN 199 
 
 charge made against him of an infamous character. It 
 is almost certain that his way was made all the harder 
 for him from the complaints which he had put in print 
 about the indifference of the Duca di Sessa to his 
 interests at the time of Gian Battista's trial. The 
 Milanese doctors had no love for him, and every 
 petulant word he might let fall would almost surely be 
 brought to the Governor's ears. By Cardan's own ad- 
 mission it appears that utterances of this sort were both 
 frequent and acrid. There was a certain physician of 
 the city who wished to place his son gratis in Cardan's 
 household. Cardan, however, refused, whereupon the 
 physician in question called attention to a certain 
 book in which Cardan had made some remarks to the 
 effect that the friendship of the Duca di Sessa had been 
 a fatal one to him, inasmuch as, having trusted too 
 entirely to this friendship for his support, he had let go 
 other interests which might have served him better. 
 The physician aforesaid made a second application to 
 Cardan to receive his son, offering this time to intercede 
 with the Governor on his behalf. This proposition 
 roused the old man's anger, and he exclaimed that he 
 had no need of such friendship or protection ; that in 
 fact the interruption of their good understanding had 
 come about more by his own act than the Governor's, 
 who had been either unable or unwilling to save Gian 
 Battista's life. The doctor replied, in the presence of 
 divers persons, that Gian Battista had perished through 
 his own foolishness : if he had not confessed he would 
 never have been condemned ; that the Senate had con- 
 demned him and not the Duca di Sessa, and that 
 Cardan was now slandering this prince most unjustly. 
 A lot of busy-bodies had by this time been attracted 
 by the wrangle, and these heard the doctor's accusations 
 
200 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 in full, but gathered a very imperfect notion of Cardan's 
 reply. He indignantly denied this charge, and in his 
 own account of the scene he affirms that he won the 
 approbation of all who listened, by the moderation of 
 his bearing and speech. 
 
 Four days after this occurrence he again met this 
 physician, who declared he knew for certain that a 
 kinsman of the Duca di Sessa, a hot-tempered man, had 
 just read some slanders written by Cardan about the 
 Duke, and had declared he would cut the writer in half 
 and throw his remains into the jakes ; the physician 
 went on to say that he had appeased this gentleman's 
 resentment, and that Cardan had now no cause for fear. 
 Cardan at once saw through the dishonesty of the 
 fellow, who was not content with bringing forward an 
 unjust accusation, but must likewise subject him to 
 these calumnies and the consequent dangers. After a 
 bout of wrangling, in which the physician sought vainly 
 to win from him an acknowledgment of the service he 
 had wrought, the malicious fellow shouted out to the 
 crowd which had gathered around them that Cardan 
 persisted in his infamous slanders against the Governor. 
 Wanton as the charge was, Cardan felt that with his 
 present unpopularity it might easily grow into a fatal 
 danger. Might was right in Milan as far as he was 
 concerned, but he determined that he must make a 
 stand against this pestilent fellow. By good luck he 
 met some friends, to whom he told the adventure ; and 
 while he was speaking, the gentleman who was said to 
 have threatened him, and the slanderous physician as 
 well, joined the gathering ; whereupon one of Cardan's 
 friends repeated the whole story to the gentleman ; who, 
 as he was quite unversed in letters, was hugely diverted 
 at hearing himself set down as a student, and told the 
 
JEROME CARDAN 201 
 
 physician that he was a fool, thereby delivering Cardan 
 at least from this annoyance. 
 
 He had refused the terms which the party opposed to 
 him in the Senate at Bologna had sent for his accept- 
 ance, and was still waiting to hear whether they would 
 carry out their original propositions. It was during 
 this time of suspense that he was subjected to strange 
 and inexplicable treatment at the hands of the Milanese 
 Senate, treatment which, viewed by the light of his own 
 report the only one extant seems very harsh and 
 unjust. Rewrites: "At the time when I was greatly 
 angered by the action of the Bolognese agent, four of 
 the Senators persuaded me to seek practice once more 
 in Milan, wherefore I, having altered my plans, began to 
 try to earn an honest living, for I reckoned that the 
 Senate of Milan knew that I had rejected the offers 
 from Bologna, since these offers were unjust in them- 
 selves, and put before me in unjust fashion. But after- 
 wards, although the same iniquitous terms were offered 
 to me, I accepted them, not indeed because I was 
 satisfied therewith, but because of my necessity, and so 
 that I might be free from those dangers which, as I 
 have before stated, pressed upon me in those days. 
 The reason why I took this step was that the Senate, by 
 most unexpected action, removed my name from the 
 lists of those licensed to teach ; nor was this all. They 
 warned me by a message that they had recently given 
 hearing to a double charge against me of very grave 
 offences, and that nothing but my position, and the 
 interests of the College, kept them back from laying me 
 in hold. Nevertheless, influenced by these considera- 
 tions, they had been moved to reduce my punishment to 
 that of exile. But neither my good fortune nor God 
 deserted me ; for on the same day certain things came 
 
202 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 to pass by means of which I was able, with a single word, 
 to free myself from all suspicion upon either charge, and 
 to prove my innocence. Moreover, I forced them to 
 admit that no mention of this affair had ever been made 
 before the Senate, although two graduates had informed 
 me that it had been discussed." 1 
 
 The Senate, however, was reluctant to stultify its late 
 action, and refused to restore Cardan's name to the list 
 of teachers. But he was put right in the sight of the 
 world by the sharp censure pronounced by the Senate 
 upon those busy-bodies who had ventured to speak in 
 its name. Cardan's last days in Milan were cheered 
 with a brief gleam of good fortune. His foes seem to 
 have overshot the mark, and to have aroused sympathy 
 for the old man, who, whatever his faults, was alike an 
 honour to his country and the victim of fortune singu- 
 larly cruel. The city took him under its protection, 
 assured of his innocence as to the widespread charges 
 against him, and pitying his misfortunes. His friend 
 Borromeo had probably been forwarding his interests 
 at the Papal Court, for he records that, just at this 
 time, certain Cardinals and men of weight wrote to 
 him from Rome in kindly and flattering terms. On 
 November 16, 1562, the messenger from the Senate of 
 Bologna arrived at Milan, bearing an offer of slightly 
 more liberal terms. They were not so favourable as 
 Cardan wished for ; but, even had they been worse, he 
 would probably have closed with them. In spite of the 
 benevolent attitude of his well-wishers in Milan, it 
 irked him to be there ; the faces in the streets, the 
 town gossip, all tended to recall to him the death of 
 his son, so he departed at once to take up his duties. 
 
 At Bologna Cardan went first to live in a hired house 
 1 Opera, torn. x. p. 462. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 203 
 
 in the Via Gombru. Aldo was nominally a member of 
 his household ; but his presence must have been a 
 plague rather than a comfort to his father, and he took 
 with him likewise his orphan grandson, the son of Gian 
 Battista and Brandonia, whom he destined to make his 
 heir on account of Aide's ill conduct. 1 This young 
 man seems to have been a hopeless scoundrel from the 
 first. The ratio in which fathers apportion their affec- 
 tion amongst their offspring is a very capricious one, 
 and Cardan may have been fully as wide of the mark in 
 chiding his younger as he was in lauding the talents 
 and virtues of his elder son. But it is certain that on 
 several occasions the authorities shared Cardan's view of 
 Aldo's ill behaviour. More than once he alludes to the 
 young reprobate's shameful conduct, and the intolerable 
 annoyance caused by the same. Many of the ancient 
 rights of parents over their children, which might to-day 
 be deemed excessive, were still operative in the cities 
 of Italy, and Cardan readily invoked the help of them 
 in trying to work reformation of a sort upon Aldo, 
 whom he caused to be imprisoned more than once, and 
 finally to be banished. 2 The numerous hitches which 
 delayed his final call to Bologna were probably due to 
 the fact that a certain party amongst the teachers there 
 were opposed to his appointment, and things did not 
 run too smoothly after he had taken up his residence 
 in his new home. It was not in Cardan's nature, how- 
 ever much he may have been cowed and broken down 
 by misfortune, to mix with men inimical to himself 
 without letting them have a taste of his quality. He 
 records one skirmish which he had with Fracantiano, 
 
 1 " Sed filius minor natu adeo mal se gessit, ut malim transire 
 in nepotem ex primo filio." De Vita Propria, ch. xxxvi. p. 112. 
 
 2 De Vita Propria^ ch. xxvii. p. 71. 
 
204 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 the Professor of the Practice of Medicine, a skirmish 
 which, in its details, resembles so closely his encounter 
 with Branda Porro, at Pavia, some time before, that it 
 suggests a doubt whether it ever had a separate exist- 
 ence, and was not simply a variant of the Branda 
 legend. " It happened that he (Fracantiano) was giving 
 an account of the passage of the gall into the stomach, 
 and was speaking in Greek before the whole Academy 
 (he was making the while an anatomical dissection), 
 when I cried out, * There is an " ov " wanting in that 
 sentence.' And as he delayed making any correction of 
 his error, and I kept on repeating my remark in a low 
 voice, the students cried out, ' Let the Codex be sent 
 for.' Fracantiano sent for it gladly. It was brought at 
 once, and when he came to read the passage, he found 
 that what I had affirmed was true to a hair. He spake 
 not another word, being overwhelmed with confusion 
 and astonishment. Moreover the students, who had 
 almost compelled me to come to the lecture, were even 
 more impressed by what had happened. But from that 
 day forth my opponent avoided all meeting with me ; 
 nay, he even gave orders to his servants that they 
 should warn him whenever they might see me approach- 
 ing, and thus he contrived that we should never fore- 
 gather. One day when he was teaching Anatomy, the 
 students brought me, by a trick, into the room, where- 
 upon he straightway fled, and having entangled his feet 
 in his robe, he fell down headlong. This accident 
 caused no little confusion, and shortly afterwards he 
 left the place, being then a man well advanced in 
 years." i 
 
 He had not lived long in Bologna before he was fated 
 to experience another repetition of one of the untoward 
 1 De Vita Propriety ch. xii. p. 40. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 205 
 
 episodes of his past life, to wit the fall of a house. It 
 was not his own house this time, but it was sufficiently 
 near to induce him to change his abode without delay. 
 Next door to the house he had hired in the Via 
 Gombru stood a palace belonging to a certain Gramigna. 
 " The entire house fell, and was ruined in a single night, 
 and together with the house perished the owner there- 
 of." It was believed that this man had divers powerful 
 enemies, and, in order that he might secure his position, 
 he contrived to bring certain of his foes into his house, 
 having first made a mine of gunpowder under the 
 portico, and set a match thereto. But for some reason 
 or other the plot miscarried the night when he destined 
 to carry it out. Gramigna went to see what was amiss, 
 and at that very moment the mine exploded and 
 brought the house to the ground. After this explosion 
 Cardan moved to a house in the Galera quarter, belong- 
 ing to the family of Ranucci ; but he did not find this 
 dwelling perfect, as he was forced to vacate the rooms 
 which were most to his taste on account of the bad 
 state of the ceilings, the plaster of which, more than 
 once, fell down upon his head. 
 
 In his Paralipomena, "the last fruit off an old tree," 
 which he put together about this time, there are numerous 
 stories of prodigies and portents ; of doors which would 
 not close, and doors which opened of their own accord ; 
 of rappings on the walls, and of mysterious thunderings 
 and noises during the night. He tells, at length, the 
 story, already referred to, of the strange thing which 
 happened to him, on the eve of his departure from 
 Pavia in 1562, while he was awaiting tidings from 
 Rome as to his appointment at Bologna. " I wore on 
 the index finger of my right hand a selenite stone set 
 in a ring, and on my left a jacinth, which I never took 
 
206 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 off my finger, this stone being large and hexagonal in 
 shape. I took the selenite from my finger and put it 
 beneath my pillow, for I fancied it kept off sleep, wear- 
 ing still the jacinth because it appeared to have the 
 opposite effect. I slept until midnight, when I awoke 
 and missed the ring from my left hand. I called Jacopo 
 Antonio, a boy of fifteen years of age who acted as my 
 servant and slept in a truckle bed, and bade him look 
 for my rings. He found the selenite at once where I 
 had placed it ; but though we both of us sought closely 
 for the jacinth we could not find it. I was sorrowful to 
 death on account of this omen, and despair seized upon 
 my soul when I remembered the dire consequences of 
 similar signs, all of which I had duly noted in my writ- 
 ings. I could scarcely believe this to be a thing happen- 
 ing in the order of nature. After a short delay I collected 
 my thoughts, and told the servant to bring a light from 
 the hearth. He replied that he would rather not do this, 
 that he was afraid of the darkness, and that the fire was 
 always extinguished in the evening. I bade him light a 
 candle with the flint, when he told me that we had neither 
 matches nor tinder nor sulphur. I persisted, and deter- 
 mined that a light should be got by one means or another, 
 for I knew that, if I should go to sleep under so dire an 
 omen, I must needs perish. So I ordered him to get 
 a light as best he could. He went away and raked 
 up the ashes, and found a bit of coal about the bigness 
 of a cherry all alight, and caught hold of it with the 
 tongs. At the same time I had little hope of getting a 
 light, but he applied it to the wick of a lamp and blew 
 thereon. The wick was lighted without any flame issuing 
 from the live coal, which thing seemed to me a further 
 marvel." 
 
 After a search with the candle the ring was found on 
 
 
JEROME CARDAN 207 
 
 the floor under the middle of the bed, but the marvel 
 was not yet worked out : the ring could not possibly 
 have got into such a place unless it had been put there 
 by hand. It could not have rolled there, on account of 
 its shape, nor could it have fallen from the bed, because 
 the pillow was closely joined to the head of the bed, 
 round which ran a raised edge with no rift therein. 
 Cardan concludes : " I know that much may be said 
 over this matter, but nothing, forsooth, which will con- 
 vince a man, ever so little inclined to superstition, that 
 there was no boding sign manifested thereby, foretelling 
 the ruin of my position and good name. Then, having 
 soothed my mind, albeit I was well-nigh hopeless, I 
 consoled myself with the belief that God still protected 
 me." After pondering long and anxiously over the 
 possible significance of this sign he took a more san- 
 guine view of the future. He next put the jacinth ring 
 on his finger and bade the boy try to pull it off, but he 
 tried in vain, so well and closely did the ring fit the 
 finger. From this time forth Cardan laid aside this 
 ring, after having worn it for many years as a safeguard 
 against lightning, plague, wakefulness, and palpitation 
 of the heart. 1 
 
 Many other instances of a like character might be 
 given from the Paralipomena ; but the foregoing will 
 suffice to show that the natural inclination of Cardan's 
 temper towards the marvellous had been aggravated by 
 his recent troubles. Also the belief that all men's hands 
 were against him never slumbered, but for this disposi- 
 tion there may well have been some justification. Scarcely 
 had he settled in Bologna before an intrigue was set in 
 motion against him. " After the events aforesaid, and 
 after I had gone to teach in Bologna, my adversaries, 
 1 Opera, torn. x. p. 459. 
 
208 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 by a trick, managed to deprive me of the use of a class- 
 room, that is to say they allotted to me an hour just 
 about the time of dinner, or they gave the class-room at 
 the very same hour, or a little earlier, to another teacher. 
 When I perceived that the authorities were unwilling to 
 accede to three distinct propositions which I made to 
 them, namely, that this other teacher should begin his 
 lecture sooner and leave off sooner : or that he should 
 teach alternately with me : I so far got my own way at 
 the next election that the other lecturer had to do his 
 teaching elsewhere." 1 
 
 It would appear that the intrigues, of which Cardan 
 gives so many instances, must have been the work of 
 certain individuals, jealous of his fame and perhaps 
 smarting under some caustic speech or downright insult, 
 rather than of the authorities ; the Senate of Bologna 
 showed no hostility to him, but on the other hand pro- 
 cured for him the privileges of citizenship. While the 
 negotiations were going on at Bologna for the further 
 regulation of his position as a teacher, he tells a strange 
 story how, on three or four different occasions, certain 
 men came to him by night, in the name of the Senate 
 and of the Judicial officers, and tried to induce him to 
 recommend that a certain woman, who had been con- 
 demned for blasphemy, and for poisoning or witchcraft 
 as well, should be pardoned, both by the temporal and 
 spiritual authorities, bringing forward specially the argu- 
 ment that, in the sight of philosophers, such things as 
 demons and spirits did not exist. They likewise urged 
 him to procure the release from prison of another woman, 
 who had not yet been condemned, because a certain sick 
 man had died under the hands of some other doctors. 
 They brought also a lot of nativities for him to read, as 
 1 De Vita Propria, ch. xvii. p. 56. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 209 
 
 if he had been a soothsayer, and not a teacher of 
 medicine, but he would have nothing to say to them. 1 
 
 It is somewhat strange that Cardan should have 
 detected no trace of the snare of the enemy in this 
 manoeuvre. Bearing in mind the character of the 
 request made, and the fact that Cardan was by no 
 means a persona grata to the petitioners, it seems highly 
 probable that they might have been more anxious to 
 draw from Cardan a profession of his disbelief in witch- 
 craft, than to procure the enlargement of the accused 
 persons whose cause they had nominally espoused. At 
 this period it was indeed dangerous to be a wizard, but 
 it was perhaps still more dangerous to pose as an avowed 
 sceptic of witchcraft. At the end of the fifteenth century 
 the frequency of executions for sorcery in the north of 
 Italy had provoked a strong outburst of popular feeling 
 against this wanton bloodshed ; but Spina, writing in 
 the interest of orthodox religion, deplores that disbelief 
 in the powers of Evil and their manifestations, always 
 recognized by the Church, should have led men on to 
 profess by their action any doubt as to the truth of 
 witchcraft. But in spite of the fulminations of men 
 of this sort, from this time onwards the more enlightened 
 scholars of Europe began to modify their opinions on 
 the subject of demoniac possession, and of witchcraft in 
 general. The first book in which the new views were 
 enunciated was the treatise De Prcestigiis Dcemonum^ 
 by Johann Wier, a physician of Cleves, published in 
 1563. The step in advance taken by this reformer was 
 not a revolutionary one. He simply denied that witches 
 were willing and conscious instruments of the malefic 
 powers, asserting that what evil they wrought came 
 about by reason of the delusions with which the evil 
 l De Vita Propria^ ch. xxiii. p. 104. 
 
210 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 spirits infected the persons said to be possessed. The 
 devil afflicted his victims directly, and then threw 
 the suspicion of the evil deed upon some old woman. 
 Wier's book was condemned and denounced by the 
 clergy he himself was a Protestant but the most 
 serious counterblast against it came from the pen of 
 Jean Bodin, the illustrious French philosopher and jurist. 
 He held up Wier to execration as an impious blasphemer, 
 and asserted that the welfare of Christendom must needs 
 suffer great injury through the dissemination of doctrines 
 so detestable as those set forth in his book. 1 
 
 Seeing that such a spirit was dominant in the minds 
 of men like Bodin, it will be evident that a charge of 
 impiety or atheism might well follow a profession of 
 disbelief, or even scepticism, as to the powers of witches 
 or of evil spirits. A maxim familiar as an utterance of 
 Sir Thomas Browne, " Ubi tres medici duo athei," was, 
 no doubt, in common use in Cardan's time; and he, as a 
 doctor, would consequently be ill-looked upon by the 
 champions of orthodoxy, who would certainly not be 
 conciliated by the fact that he was the friend of Cardinal 
 Morone. This learned and enlightened prelate had 
 been imprisoned by the savage and fanatical Paul IV., 
 on a charge of favouring opinions analogous to Pro- 
 testantism, but Pius IV., the easy-going Milanese juris- 
 consult, turned ecclesiastic, enlarged him by one of the 
 first acts of his Papacy, and restored him to the charge 
 of the diocese of Modena. 
 
 Besides enjoying at Bologna the patronage of princes 
 of the Church like Borromeo and Morone, Cardan found 
 
 1 This opinion prevailed with men of learning far into the next 
 century. Sir Thomas Browne writes : " They that doubt of these, do 
 not only deny them, but spirits ; and are obliquely and upon conse- 
 quence a sect not of infidels, but atheists." Religio Medici, Works, 
 vol. ii. p. 89. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 211 
 
 there an old friend in Ludovico Ferrari, who was at 
 this time lecturing on mathematics. He also received 
 into his house a new pupil, a Bolognese youth named 
 Rodolfo Sylvestro, who was destined hereafter to bring 
 as great credit to his teacher's name in Medicine as 
 Ferrari had already brought thereto in Mathematics. 
 Rodolfo proved to be one of the most faithful and 
 devoted of friends ; he remained at Bologna as long as 
 Cardan continued to live there, sharing his master's 
 ill-fortune, and ultimately accompanied him to Rome 
 in 1571. He gives the names of two other Bolognese 
 students, Giulio Pozzo and Camillo Zanolino, but of all 
 his surviving pupils he rates Sylvestro as the most gifted. 
 The records of Cardan's life at this period are scant 
 and fragmentary, few events being chronicled except 
 dreams and portents. In giving an account of one of 
 these manifestations, which happened in September 1563, 
 he incidentally lets light upon certain changes and 
 vicissitudes in his own affairs. He was at this time 
 living in an apartment in the house of the Ranucci, next 
 door to a half-ruined palace of the Ghislieri. One night 
 he awoke from sleep, and found that the neck-band of 
 his shirt had become entangled with the cord by which 
 he kept his precious emerald and a written charm sus- 
 pended round his neck. He tried to disentangle the 
 knot, but in vain, so he left the complication as it was, 
 purposing to unravel it by daylight. He did not fall 
 asleep ; but, after lying quiet for a little, he determined 
 to attempt once more whether he could undo the knot, 
 when he found that everything was clear, and the stone 
 under his armpit. " This sign showed me an unhoped- 
 for solution of certain weighty difficulties, and at the 
 same time proved, as I have often said elsewhere, that 
 there must have been present something else unperceived 
 
212 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 by me. For my affairs were in this condition : my son- 
 in-law at Milan had the administration of the scant 
 remains of my property, and I received no rents there- 
 from for a whole year. My literary work was lying at 
 the printer's, but it was not printed. Here, at Bologna, 
 I was forced to lecture without having a fixed hour 
 assigned to me. A crowd of enemies were intriguing 
 against me. My son Aldo was in prison, and of little 
 profit to me. But immediately after this portent I 
 learned that my two chief opponents were either dying 
 or about to retire. The question of the lecture-room 
 was settled amicably, so that for the next year I was 
 able to live in quiet. These two matters having come 
 to an issue, I will next describe what came to pass with 
 regard to the others. 
 
 "During the next July (1564), through the help of 
 Francesco Alciati, 1 the secretary of Pope Pius IV., a 
 man to whom I am indebted for almost every benefit I 
 have received since 1561, I began to enjoy my own 
 again. On August 26 I received from the printer my 
 books all printed with the greatest care, and by reason 
 of the dispatch of this business my income was greatly 
 increased. The next day my chief opponent resigned 
 his office, and left vacant a salary of seven hundred gold 
 crowns. The only manifestation of adverse fortune left 
 to trouble me was the conspiracy of the doctors against 
 me, but there were already signs that this would dis- 
 appear before long, and in sooth it came to an end after 
 the lapse of another year." 2 
 
 During this portion of his life at Bologna, Cardan 
 seems to have lived comparatively alone, and to have 
 
 1 This was the Cardinal, the nephew of Andrea the great jurist, 
 who was also a good friend of Cardan. 
 z Opera.) torn. x. p. 463. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 213 
 
 spent his weary leisure in brooding over his sorrows. 
 He began his long rambling epilogue to the De Libris 
 Propriis, and, almost on the threshold, pours out his 
 sorrow afresh over Gian Battista's unhappy fate. After 
 affirming that Death must necessarily come as a friend 
 to those whose lives are wretched, he begins to speculate 
 whether, after all, he ought not to rejoice rather than 
 mourn over his son's death. " Certes he is rid of this 
 miserable life of danger and difficulty, vain, sorrowful, 
 brief, and inconstant ; these times in which the major 
 part of the good things of the world fall to the trickster's 
 share, and all may be enjoyed by those who are backed 
 up by wealth or power or favour. Power is good when 
 it is in the hands of those who use it well, but it is a 
 great evil when murderers and poisoners are allowed to 
 wield it. To the ill-starred, to the ungodly, and to the 
 foolish, death is a boon, freeing them from numberless 
 dangers, from heavy griefs, from fatal troubles, and from 
 infamy ; wherefore in such cases it ought not to be 
 spoken of as something merely good or indifferent, but 
 rated as the best of fortune. Shall I not declare to God 
 (for He willed the deed), to myself, and to my surviving 
 family, that my son's death was a thing to be desired, 
 for God does all justly, wisely, and lovingly ? He lets 
 me stand as an example to show others that a good and 
 upright man cannot be altogether wretched. I am poor, 
 infirm, and old ; bereaved by a cruel wrong of my best- 
 loved son, a youth of the fairest promise, and left only 
 with the faintest hope of any ray of future good fortune, 
 or of seeing my race perpetuated after my death, for my 
 daughter, who has been nine years married, is barren. 
 
 "At one time I was prosperous in every relation of 
 life : in my friendships, in my children, and in my health 
 In my youth I seemed to be one raised up to realize the 
 
214 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 highest hopes. I was accustomed to all the good things 
 nay, to all the luxuries of life. Now I am wretched, 
 despised, with foes swarming around me; I not only 
 count myself miserable, I feel I am far more miserable 
 now than I was happy aforetime. Yet I neither lose 
 my wits nor make any boast, as my actions prove. I 
 do my work as a teacher with my mind closely set on 
 the matter in question, and for this reason I attract a 
 large number of hearers. I manage my affairs better 
 than heretofore ; and, if any man shall compare the 
 book which I have lately published with those which I 
 wrote some time ago, he will not fail to perceive how 
 vastly my intellect has gained in richness, in vivacity, 
 and in purity." 
 
 Though the note of sorrow or even of despair is per- 
 ceptible in these sentences, there is no sign that the virile 
 and elastic spirit of the writer is broken. But there are 
 manifest signs of an increasing tendency towards mental 
 detachment from the world which had used him so ill. 
 With the happiest of men the almost certain prospect 
 of extinction at the end of a dozen years usually tends 
 to foster the growth of a conviction that the world after 
 all is a poor affair, and that to quit it is no great evil. 
 How strongly therefore must reflections of a kindred 
 nature have worked upon a man so cruelly tried as 
 Cardan ! 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 AT the beginning of the year 1565 Cardan had a 
 narrow escape from death by burning, for his bed from 
 some unknown cause caught fire twice in the same night 
 while he was asleep. The servant was disturbed by the 
 smoke, and having aroused his master, told him what 
 was amiss, whereupon Cardan flew into a violent rage, 
 for he deemed that the youth must be drunk. But he 
 soon perceived the danger, and then they both set to 
 work to extinguish the flames. His own description of 
 the occurrence is highly characteristic. " Having put 
 out the fire, I settled myself again to sleep, and, while I 
 was dreaming of alarms, and that I was flying from 
 some danger, it happened that either these terrifying 
 dreams, or the fire and smoke again aroused me, and, 
 looking around, I found that the bed was once more 
 alight, and the greater part of it consumed. The vari- 
 coloured coverlet, the leather hangings, and all the 
 covering of the bed was unhurt. Thus this great alarm 
 and danger and serious disturbance caused only a trifling 
 loss ; less than half of the bed-linen was burnt, but the 
 blankets were entirely consumed. On the first alarm 
 the flames burnt out twice or thrice with little smoke, 
 and caused scarcely any damage. The second time the 
 fire and the mishap forced me to rise just before dawn, 
 the fire lasting altogether about seven hours." 
 
 215 
 
2i6 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 There was naturally a warning sign to be found in 
 this accident. 1 The smoke, Cardan said, denoted dis- 
 grace ; the fire, peril and fear ; the flame, a grave and 
 pressing danger to his life. The smouldering fire 
 signified secret plots which were to be put into execution 
 against him by his servants while he lay in bed. And 
 the fact that he set fire to the bed himself, denoted that 
 he would be able to meet any coming danger alone and 
 without assistance. The indictment against him was 
 foreshadowed by the fire and the flames and the smoke. 
 Poison and assault were not to be feared. Men might 
 indeed ask questions as to what kind of danger it could 
 be which only arose from those about him, and fell short 
 of poison and violence. The fire, he goes on to say, 
 signifies the Magistrate. More than once it seemed to 
 be extinct, but it always revived. Danger seemed to 
 threaten him less from open hostility than from the 
 cunning flattery of foes, and from over-confidence on 
 his own part. His books, which he had lately caused 
 to be printed, appeared to be in grave peril, but a graver 
 one overhung his life. He deemed that he would quit 
 the tribunal condemned by the empty scandal of the 
 crowd, suffering no slight loss, and worsted chiefly 
 through putting faith in false friends, and through his 
 own instability. On the whole, the loss would prove 
 inconsiderable ; the danger moderate, but the vexation 
 exceedingly heavy. These results might have sprung 
 from causes other than natural ones ; but, on the other 
 hand, such things often come about through chance. 
 They might prove to be a warning to him to keep clear 
 
 1 He mentions this matter briefly in the De Vita Propria : " Bis 
 arsisset lectus, praedixi me non permansurum Bononise, et prima 
 vice restiti, secunda non potui." ch. xli. p. 151. A fuller account of 
 it is in Opera, torn. x. p. 464. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 217 
 
 of hostile prejudice, and to make friends of those in 
 authority, care being taken not to let himself become 
 involved in their private affairs, and not to seek too 
 close an acquaintance. 1 
 
 Up to this date, Cardan, when he visited his patients, 
 had either walked or ridden a mule. In 1562 he began 
 to use a carriage, but this change of habit brought ill 
 luck with it, for, in this same year, his horses ran away; 
 he was thrown out of the vehicle, and sustained an injury 
 to one of the fingers of his right hand, and to the right 
 arm as well. 2 The finger soon healed, but the damage 
 to the right arm shifted itself over to the left side, leav- 
 ing the right arm sound. The foregoing details, taken 
 chiefly from the Paralipomena (Book III. ch. xii.), are 
 somewhat significant in respect to the serious trouble 
 which came upon him soon afterwards. 
 
 Though he had now secured a class-room for himself, 
 the malice of his enemies was not yet abated. Just 
 before the end of his term, certain of them went to 
 Cardinal Morone and told him that it would be inex- 
 pedient to allow Cardan to retain his Professorship any 
 longer, seeing that scarcely any pupils went to listen to 
 him. The terms Cardan used in describing this hostile 
 movement against him, 3 rouse a suspicion that there may 
 
 1 Opera, torn. x. p. 464. 
 
 2 De Vita Propria, ch. xxx. p. 80. He seems to have had many 
 untoward experiences in driving. He tells of another mishap (Opera, 
 torn. i. p. 472) in June 1570; how a fellow, some tipstaff of the 
 courts, jumped into his carriage and frightened the mares Cardan 
 was driving, jeering at them likewise because they were rather bare 
 of flesh. 
 
 3 " Demum sub conductionis fine, voces sparserunt, et maxime 
 apud Moronum Cardinalem, me exiguo auditorio profited, quod 
 quanquam non omnino verum esset, quinimo ab initio Academiae 
 multos, et usque ad dies jejunii haberem auditores." De Vita 
 Propria, ch. xvil p. 56. 
 
218 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 have been some ground for the assertion of his ad- 
 versaries ; but he declares that, at any rate, he had a 
 good many pupils from the beginning of the session up 
 to the time of Lent. He gives no clue whereby the 
 date of this intrigue may be exactly ascertained, but it 
 probably happened near the end of his sojourn at 
 Bologna, because in his account of it he describes like- 
 wise the cessation of his public teaching, and makes no 
 mention of any resumption of the same. He declares that 
 he was at last overborne by the multitude of his foes, and 
 their cunning plots. Under the pretence that, in seeking 
 Cardan's removal, they were really acting for his benefit, 
 they succeeded in bringing Cardinal Morone round to 
 their views. Cardan's final words in dealing with this 
 matter help to fix the date of this episode as some time 
 in 1570. Speaking of his enemies, he writes: "Nay 
 indeed they have given me greater leisure for the codifi- 
 cation of my books, they have lengthened my days, they 
 have increased my fame, and, by procuring my removal 
 from the work which was too laborious for me, they 
 secured for me the pleasure I now enjoy in the discovery 
 and investigation of divers of the secrets of Nature. 
 Therefore I constantly tell myself that I do not hate 
 these men, nor deem them blameworthy, because they 
 wrought me an ill turn, but because of the malignancy 
 they had in their hearts." 1 
 
 It is almost certain that this removal of Cardan from 
 his office of teacher was part and parcel of a carefully- 
 devised plot against him, and a prelude to more serious 
 trouble in the near future. Early in April 1570 he had 
 occasion to put into writing a certain medical opinion 
 which was to be sent to Cardinal Morone. He describes 
 the episode : " It chanced that one of the sheets of my 
 1 De Vita Propria^ ch. xvii. p. 57* 
 
JEROME CARDAN 219 
 
 manuscript fell from the table down upon the floor, and 
 then flew by itself up to the cornice of the room, where it 
 hung, fixed to the woodwork. Greatly amazed, I called 
 for Rodolfo, and pointed out to him this marvel. He 
 did not indeed see it fly up, and at that time I was 
 ignorant as to what it might foretell, for I had no fore- 
 boding of the many ills which were about to molest me. 
 But now I see that the meaning of this portent must 
 have been that, after the approaching shipwreck of my 
 fortunes, my bark would be sped along with a more 
 favouring breeze. It was during the month following, 
 unless I am mistaken, that, when I was once more 
 writing a letter to Cardinal Morone, I looked for a 
 certain powder-box which had been missing for some 
 long time, and, when I lifted up a sheet of paper in 
 order to powder it with dust gathered up from the floor 
 of the room, there was the powder-box, hidden beneath 
 the sheet. How could it have come there on the level 
 writing-desk? This sign confirmed the hope I had 
 already conceived of the Cardinal's wisdom and humanity; 
 that he would plead with the Pope, the best of men, in 
 such wise that I should find a prosperous end to my 
 toilsome life." 1 
 
 The blow thus foreshadowed fell on October 6, 1570, 
 when he was suddenly arrested and put under restraint. 
 He speaks of a bond which he gave for eighteen hundred 
 gold crowns ; and says that, while he was in hold, all 
 his estate was administered by the civil authorities. 
 Rodolfo Sylvestro was constantly with him during his 
 incarceration, and on January i, 1571, he was released, 
 just at nightfall, and allowed to return to his own house. 
 While he was in prison in the month of October some 
 mysterious knockings at the door supplied him with a 
 1 De Vita Propria.) ch, xliii. p. 165. 
 
220 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 fulfilment and explanation of the portents lately chroni- 
 cled. The knockings appeared furthermore to warn him 
 of approaching death, and he began to bewail his misery ; 
 but, having gathered courage, he heartened himself to 
 face his doom, which could be nothing worse than death. 
 Young men, leaders of armies, courted death in battle 
 to win the favour of their sovereigns ; wherefore he, a 
 decrepit old man, might surely await his end with calm- 
 ness. He then wanders off into a long disquisition on 
 the philosophy of Polybius, and forgets entirely to set 
 down further details of his imprisonment, or to explain 
 the cause thereof. 
 
 Pius IV. had died at the end of 1565, and had been 
 succeeded by Michele Ghislieri, the Cardinal of Ales- 
 sandria, as Pius V. Like his predecessor, the new Pope 
 was a Milanese by birth, but in character and aims the 
 two Popes were entirely different. Pius. V. identified 
 himself completely with the work of the Holy Office, 
 and straightway set in operation all its powers for the 
 extirpation of the heretical opinions which, on account 
 of the easy-going character of the late Pope, had made 
 much progress in Italy, and nowhere more than in 
 Bologna. Von Ranke, in the History of the Popes^ gives 
 an extract (vol. i. p. 97) from the compendium of the 
 Inquisitors, which sets forth that " Bologna was in a very 
 perilous state, because there the heretics were especially 
 numerous ; amongst them was a certain Gian Battista 
 Rotto, who enjoyed the friendship and support of many 
 persons of weight, such as Morone, Pole, and the 
 Marchesa Pescara (Vittoria Colonna). Rotto made 
 himself very active in collecting money, which he dis- 
 tributed amongst the poor folk of Bologna who were 
 heretics." 
 
 It will be remembered that in 1562, while he was 
 
JEROME CARDAN 221 
 
 waiting in Milan for the appointment as Professor at 
 Bologna, Cardan submitted his books to the Congrega- 
 tion of the Index for approval. He was known to be 
 a fellow-citizen and friend of the reigning Pope : the 
 corpus of his work had by that time reached a por- 
 tentous size, wherefore it is quite possible that the official 
 readers may have been lenient, or cursory, over their 
 work ; but when Pius V., the strenuous ascetic foe of 
 heresy, stepped into the place of the indolent Pius IV., 
 jurist and politician rather than Churchman, it is more 
 than probable that certain amateurinquisitors at Bologna, 
 fully as anxious to work Cardan's ruin as to safeguard 
 the faith, may have busied themselves in hunting through 
 his various works for passages upon which to base a 
 charge of unorthodoxy. Such passages were not hard 
 to find. There was the horoscope of Jesus Christ, which 
 subsequently affronted the piety of De Thou. There 
 was the passage already noticed in which he said such 
 hard things of the Dominicans (De Varietate Rerum, 
 1557, p. 572). He had indeed disclaimed it, but there 
 it stood unexpunged in the subsequent editions of the 
 book ; and, while considering this detail, it may be re- 
 marked that Pius V. began his career as a member of 
 the Dominican Order, the practices of which Cardan had 
 impugned. In the first and second editions of the De 
 Subtilitate was another passage in which the tenets of 
 Islam and the circumstances of the birth of Christ were 
 handled in a way which caused grave scandal and offence. 1 
 
 1 " Alii multis diebus abstinent cibo, alii igne uruntur, ac ferro 
 secantur, nullum doloris vestigium preferentes ; multi sunt vocem 
 e pectore mittentes, qui olim engastrimuthi dicebantur ; hoc autem 
 maxime eis contingit cum orgia qusedam exercent, atque circum- 
 feruntur in orbem. Quse tria ut verissima sunt et naturali ratione 
 mira tamen constant, cujus superius mentionem fecimus, ita illud 
 confictum nasci pueros e mulieribus absque concubitu." De Sub- 
 tilitate^ p. 353. 
 
222 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 This passage indeed was expunged in the edition of 1 560. 
 The Paralipomena were not in print and available, but 
 what can be read in them to-day doubtless reflects with 
 accuracy the attitude of Cardan's mind towards religious 
 matters in 1570. Though the Paralipomena were locked 
 in his desk, it is almost certain that the spirit with which 
 they were inspired would have infected Cardan's brain, 
 and prompted him to repeat in words the views on re- 
 ligion and a future state which he had already put on 
 paper, for he rarely let discretion interfere with the 
 enunciation of any opinion he favoured. In the Para- 
 lipomena are many passages written in the spirit of 
 universalism, and treating of the divine principle as 
 something which animates wise men alone, wise men 
 and philosophers of every age and every clime, Aris- 
 totle being the head and chief. Plato and Socrates and 
 the Seven Sages adorn this illustrious circle, which in- 
 cludes likewise the philosophers of Chaldea and Egypt. 
 Opinions like these were no longer the passport to 
 Papal favour or even toleration. The age of the 
 humanist Popes was past, and the Puritan movement, 
 stimulated into life by the active competition of the 
 Reformers, was beginning to show its strength, so that 
 a man who spoke in terms of respect or reverence con- 
 cerning Averroes or Plato would put himself in no light 
 peril. Thus for those of Cardan's enemies who were 
 minded to search and listen it must have been an easy 
 task to formulate against him a charge of heresy, 
 specious enough to carry conviction to such a burning 
 zealot as Pius V. This Pope, in his new regulations 
 for the maintenance of Church discipline, requisitioned 
 the services of physicians in the detection of laxity of 
 religious practices, or of unsoundness. " We forbid," he 
 says in one of his bulls, " every physician, who may be 
 
JEROME CARDAN 223 
 
 called to the bedside of a patient, to visit for more than 
 three days, unless he receives an attestation that the 
 sick man has made fresh confession of his sins/' 1 
 Cardan, with his irritable temper, may very likely have 
 treated this regulation as an unwarrantable interference 
 with his profession, and have paid no attention to it. 
 Again, he evidently followed Hippocrates in rejecting 
 the supernatural origin of disease ; a position greatly in 
 advance of that held by certain of the leading physiolo- 
 gists of the time. 2 Thus in more ways than one he may 
 have laid himself open to some charge of disrespect shown 
 to religion or to the spiritual powers. The absence of 
 any other specific accusation and the circumstances of 
 his incarceration, taken in conjunction with the foregoing 
 considerations, almost compel the conclusion that his 
 arrest and imprisonment in 1570 were brought about by 
 a charge of impiety whispered by some envious tongue 
 which will never now be identified. The sanction 
 given by the authorities of the Church to his writings 
 in 1562, operated without doubt to mitigate the 
 punishment which fell upon him, and suffered him, after 
 due purgation of his offences, to enjoy for the residue 
 of his days a life comparatively quiet and prosperous 
 under the patronage of Pius V. 
 
 Though he was let out of prison he was not yet a free 
 man. For some twelve weeks longer he remained a 
 prisoner in his own house, the bond for eighteen hundred 
 gold crowns having doubtless been given on this account. 
 Almost his last reflection about his life at Bologna is 
 one in which he records his satisfaction that all the men 
 who plotted against him there met their death soon 
 
 1 Ranke, History of the Popes, vol. i. p. 246. 
 
 2 Mr. Stephen Paget in his life of Ambroise Pare, the great con- 
 temporary French surgeon, gives an interesting account of Park's 
 beliefs on the divine cause of the plague, p. 269. 
 
224 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 after their attempt, thus sharing the fate of his enemies 
 at Milan and Pavia. If he is to be believed in this 
 matter, the Fates, though they might not shield him 
 from attack, proved themselves to be diligent and re- 
 morseless avengers of his wrongs. At the end of Sep- 
 tember he turned his back upon Bologna and the cold 
 hospitality it had given him, and set forth on his last 
 journey. He travelled by easy stages, and entered 
 Rome on October 7, 1571, the day upon which Don 
 John of Austria annihilated the Turkish fleet at Lepanto. 
 There are evidences in his later writings beyond those 
 already cited, that Cardan's views on religion had under- 
 gone change during his sojourn at Bologna. It was the 
 custom, even with theologians of the time, to illustrate 
 freely from the classics, wherefore the spectacle of the 
 names of the great men of Greek and Roman letters, 
 scattered thickly about the pages of any book, would 
 not prove or even suggest unorthodoxy. Cardan quotes 
 Plato or Aristotle or Plotinus twenty times for any saint 
 in the Calendar. He does not mention the Virgin more 
 than once or twice in the whole of the De Vita Propria ; 
 and, in discoursing on the immortality of the soul, he 
 cites the opinion of Avicenna, but makes no mention of 
 either saint or father. 1 The world of classic thought was 
 immeasurably nearer and more real to Cardan than it 
 can be to any modern dweller beyond the Alps : to him 
 there had been no solution of continuity between classic 
 times and his own. When he sat down to write in the 
 Theonoston his meditations on the death of his son, in 
 the vain hope of reaping consolation therefrom, he in- 
 voked the golden rule of Plotinus, which lays down that 
 the future is foreseen and arranged by the gods. Being 
 thus arranged, it must needs be just, for God is the 
 1 De Vita Propria, ch. xxii. p. 63. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 225 
 
 highest expression of justice. Against a fate thus 
 settled for us we have no right to complain, lest we 
 should seem to be setting ourselves into opposition to 
 God's will. Here, although he writes in the spirit of 
 a Christian, the authority cited is that of a heathen 
 philosopher, and the form of his meditations is taken 
 rather from Seneca than from father or schoolman. 
 The devotional bias of Cardan's nature seems to have 
 been strengthened temporarily by the terrible experi- 
 ences of Gian Battista's trial and death; but in the 
 course of his residence at Bologna a marked reaction 
 set in, and the fervent religious outburst, in which he 
 sought consolation during his intolerable sorrow, was 
 succeeded by a calmer mood which regarded the neces- 
 sary evils of life as transitory accidents, and death as 
 the one and certain end of sorrow, and perhaps of 
 consciousness as well. What he wrote during his resi- 
 dence in Rome he kept in manuscript ; his recent 
 experience at Bologna warned him that, living under 
 the shadow of the Vatican with Pius V. as the ruler 
 thereof, it behoved him to walk as an obedient son 
 of the Church. 
 
 Cardan went first to live in the Piazza di San 
 Girolamo, not far from the Porto del Popolo, but 
 subsequently he lived in a house in the Via Giulia 
 near the church of Santa Maria di Monserrato, where 
 probably he died. He had not long been settled in 
 Rome before he was able to add a fresh supernatural 
 experience to his already overburdened list. In the 
 month of August 1572 he was lying awake one night 
 with a lamp burning, when suddenly he heard a loud 
 noise to the right of the chamber, as if a cart laden with 
 planks was being unloaded. He looked up, and, the 
 door being open at the time, he perceived a peasant 
 
 Q 
 
226 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 entering the room. Just as he was on the threshold 
 the intruder uttered the . words, " Te sin casa" and 
 straightway vanished. This apparition puzzled him 
 greatly, and he alludes to it again in chapter xlvii. 
 of the De Vita Propria. Ultimately he dismisses it 
 with the remark that the explanation of such phe- 
 nomena is rather the duty of theologians than of philo- 
 sophers. 
 
 With regard to matters of religious belief he seems 
 to have taken as a rule of conduct the remark above 
 written, and left them to the care of professional 
 experts, for very few of his recorded opinions throw 
 any light upon his views of the dogmas and doctrines 
 of the Church. Whatever the tenor of these opinions 
 may have been, he never proclaimed them definitely. 
 Probably they interested him little, for he was not 
 the man to keep silent over a subject which he had 
 greatly at heart. He gave a general assent to the 
 teaching of the Church, taking up the mental attitude 
 of the vast majority of the learned men of his time, and 
 expected that the Church would do all that was neces- 
 sary for him in its own particular province. If he regarded 
 Erasmus and Luther as disturbers of the faith and heretics, 
 he did not say so, nor did he censure their activity. 
 (Erasmus he praises highly in the opening words of the 
 horoscope which he drew for him. Gen. Ex., p. 496.) But 
 he had certainly no desire to emulate them or give them 
 his support. The world of letters and science was wide 
 enough even for his active spirit; the world lying behind 
 the veil he left to the exploration of those inquirers who 
 might have a taste for such a venture. Still every page 
 of his life's record shows how strong was his bent towards 
 the supernatural; but the phase of the supernatural which 
 he chose for study was one which Churchmen, as a rule, 
 
JEROME CARDAN 227 
 
 had let alone. Spirits wandering about this world were 
 of greater moment to him than spirits fixed in beatitude 
 or bane in the next; and accordingly, whenever he finds 
 an opportunity, he discourses of apparitions, lamiae, 
 incubi, succubi, malignant and beneficent genii, and the 
 methods of invoking them. Now that old age was pressing 
 heavily upon him and he began to yearn for support, he 
 sought consolation not in the ecstatic vision of the fervent 
 Catholic, but in fostering the belief that he was in sooth 
 under the protection of some guardian spirit like that 
 which had attended his father and divers of the sages 
 of old. Although he had in his earlier days treated his 
 father's belief with a certain degree of respect and cred- 
 ence, 1 there is no evidence that he was possessed with 
 the notion that any such supernatural guardian attended 
 his own footsteps at the time when he put together the 
 De Varietate; indeed it would seem that his belief was 
 exactly the opposite. He writes as follows : " It is 
 first of all necessary to know that there is one God, 
 the Author of all good, by whose power all things were 
 made, and in whose name all good things are brought 
 to pass ; also, that if a man shall err he need not be 
 guilty of sin. That there is no other to whom we owe 
 anything or whom we are bound to worship or serve. 
 If we keep these sayings with a pure mind we shall be 
 kept pure ourselves and free from sin^ What a demon 
 may be I know not, these beings I neither recognize nor 
 love. I worship one God, and Him alone I serve. And 
 in truth these things ought not to be published in the 
 hearing of unlearned folk ; for, if once this belief in 
 spirits be taken up, it may easily come to pass that 
 they who apply themselves to such arts will attribute 
 
 1 " Multa de daemonibus narrabat, quae quam vera essent nescio." 
 De Utilitate, p. 348. 
 
228 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 God's work to the devil." x And in another place : " I 
 of a truth know of no spirit or genius which attends 
 me ; but should one come to me, after being warned 
 of the same in dreams, if it should be given to me by 
 God, I will still reverence God alone ; to Him alone will 
 I give thanks, for any benefit which may befall me, as 
 the bountiful source and principle of all good. And, in 
 sooth, the spirit may rest untroubled if I repay my debt 
 to our common Master. I know full well that He has 
 given to me, for my good genius, reason, patience in 
 trouble, a good disposition, a disregard of money and 
 dignities, which gifts I use to the full, and deem them 
 better and greater possessions than the Demon of 
 Socrates." 2 
 
 About the Demon of Socrates Cardan has much to 
 say in the De Varietate. He never even hints a doubt 
 as to the veracity and sincerity of Socrates, He is quite 
 sure that Socrates was fully persuaded of the reality of 
 his attendant genius, and favours the view that this belief 
 may have been well founded. He takes an agnostic 
 position, 3 confining his positive statement to an as- 
 sertion of his own inability to realize the presence of 
 any ghostly minister attendant upon himself, In the 
 De Subtilitate he tells an experience of his own by way 
 of suggesting that some of the demons spoken of by the 
 retailers of marvels might be figments of the brain. 
 In 1550 Cardan was called in to see a certain woman 
 who had long been troubled with an obscure disease of 
 the bladder. Every known remedy was tried in vain, 
 
 1 De Varietate, p. 351. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 658. 
 
 3 In his counsel to his children, he writes : " Do not believe that 
 you hear demons speak to you, or that you behold the dead. Seek 
 not to learn the truth of these things, for they are amongst the things 
 which are hidden from us." 
 
JEROME CARDAN 229 
 
 when one day a certain Josephus Niger, 1 a distinguished 
 Greek scholar, went to see the patient. Niger, according 
 to Cardan's account, was quite ignorant of medicine, but 
 he was reputed to be a skilled master of magic arts. The 
 woman had a son, a boy about ten years old, and Josephus 
 having handed him a three-cornered crystal, which he 
 had with him, bade the youth secretly to look into it, 
 and then declare, in his mother's hearing, that he could 
 see in the crystal three very terrible demons going on 
 foot. Then, after Josephus had whispered certain other 
 words in the boy's ear, the boy went on to say that he 
 beheld another demon, vastly bigger than the first, 
 riding on horseback and bearing in his hand a three- 
 tined fork. This monster overthrew the other demons, 
 and led them away captive, bound with chains to his 
 saddlebow. After listening to these words the woman 
 rapidly got well, and Cardan, in commenting on the 
 event, declares that she must have been cured either by 
 the agency of the demons or by the force of the imagin- 
 ation, inasmuch as it would be difficult, if not impossible, 
 to invent any other reason of her recovery. 2 In another 
 passage of the De Subtilitate he displays judicious reserve 
 in writing of Demons in general. 3 
 
 During those terrible days, when his son had just died 
 a felon's death, and when he himself was haunted by the 
 real dangers which beset him, and almost maddened by 
 the signs and tokens which seemed to tell of others to 
 come, the belief which Fazio his father had nourished 
 
 1 Cardan alludes to Niger in De Varietate, p. 641 : "Referebat 
 aliquando Josephus Niger harum rerum maxime* peritus, daemonem 
 pueris se sub forma Christ! ostendisse, petiisseque ut adoraretur." 
 
 2 De Subtilitate, p. 530. 
 
 3 " Nolim ego ad trutinam haec sectari, velut Porphyrius, Psellus, 
 Plotinus, Proclus, Jamblicus, qui copiose de his quse non videre, 
 velut historiam natse rei scripserunt." De Subtilitate^ p. 540. 
 
230 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 easily found a lodgment in his shaken and bewildered 
 brain. In the Dialogus de Humanis Consiliis, one of the 
 speakers tells of a certain man who is clearly meant to 
 be Cardan himself. The speaker goes on to say that he 
 is sure this man is attended by a genius, which manifested 
 itself to him somewhat late in his life. " Aforetime, indeed, 
 it had been wont to convey to him warnings in dreams and 
 by certain noises. What greater proof of his power could 
 there be than the cure of this man, without the use of 
 drugs, of an intestinal rupture on the right side ? If 
 indeed it had not fared with him thus, after his son's 
 death, he would at once have passed out of this life, 
 whereby many and great evils might have come to pass. 
 He was freed also from another troublesome ailment. 
 In sooth, so many and so mighty are the wonderful 
 things which had befallen him, that I, who am very 
 intimate with him (and he himself thinks the same), 
 am constrained to believe that he is attended by a 
 genius, great and powerful and rare, and that he is not 
 the master of his own actions. What he would have, he 
 has not ; and what he has, he would not have chosen, 
 or even wished for. This thing causes him much trouble, 
 but he submits when he reflects that all things are God's 
 handiwork." The speaker ends by saying that he never 
 heard of any others thus attended, save this man, and 
 his father before him, and Socrates. 1 
 
 But it is in chapter xlvii. of the De Vita Propria, 
 which must have been written shortly before his death, 
 that he lets the reader see most plainly how strong was 
 the hold which this belief in a guardian spirit of his own 
 had taken upon him. "It is an admitted truth," he 
 writes, "that attendant spirits have protected certain 
 men, to wit, Socrates, Plotinus, Synesius, Dion, Flavius 
 1 Opera, torn. i. 672. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 231 
 
 Josephus, and myself. All of these have enjoyed pros- 
 perous lives except Socrates and me, and I, as I have 
 said before, was at one time offered many and favourable 
 opportunities for the achievement of happiness. But C. 
 Caesar the dictator, Cicero, Antony, Brutus, and Cassius 
 were also attended by mighty spirits, albeit malignant. 
 For a long time I have been persuaded that I too had 
 one, but by what method it gave me intelligence as to 
 events about to happen, I could not exactly ascertain 
 until I reached the seventy-fourth year of my age, the 
 season when I began to write this record of my life. I 
 now perceive that when I was in Milan in 1557, when 
 my genius perceived what was hanging over me how 
 that my son on that same evening had promised to 
 marry Brandonia Seroni, and that he would complete 
 the nuptials the following day it produced in me that 
 palpitation of the heart of which I have already made 
 mention, a weakness known to my genius alone, a 
 manifestation which served to simulate a trembling 
 of the bed." 
 
 Cardan writes at length to show that the mysterious 
 knocking which he and Rodolfo Sylvestro had heard 
 during his imprisonment at Bologna, the peasant who 
 entered his bed-chamber saying " Te sin casa," and 
 divers other manifestations, going back as far as 1531 
 croaking of ravens, barking of dogs, and the ignition 
 of fire-wood must all have been brought about by the 
 working of this powerful spirit. In 1570 there happened 
 to him one of his everyday experiences of the presence 
 of supernatural powers. In the middle of the night he 
 was conscious of some presence walking about the room. 
 It sat down beside him, and at the same time a loud 
 noise arose from a chest which stood near. This phe- 
 nomenon, he admits, might well have been the figment 
 
232 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 of a brain overburdened with thought ; but suddenly his 
 memory flies back to an experience of his twentieth year, 
 upon which he proceeds to build a story, wild and fanci- 
 ful even for his powers of imagination. " What man was 
 it," he asks, " who sold me that copy of Apuleius when 
 I was in my twentieth year, and forthwith went away ? 
 I indeed, at that time, had made only one essay in the 
 literary arena, and had no knowledge of the Latin tongue; 
 but in spite of this, and because the book had a gilded 
 cover, I was imprudent enough to buy it. The very 
 next day I found myself just as well versed in Latin as 
 I am now. Moreover, almost at the same time I acquired 
 knowledge of Greek and Spanish and French, sufficient 
 for reading books written in these languages." 
 
 Cardan was by this time completely possessed by the 
 belief in his attendant genius, and the flash of memory 
 which recalled the purchase of some book or other in his 
 youth, suggested likewise the attribution of certain mystic 
 powers to this guardian genius, and conjured up some 
 fanciful explanation as to the way these powers had 
 been exercised upon himself; he, the person most closely 
 concerned, being entirely unconscious of their operation 
 at the time when they first affected him. This recorded 
 belief in a gift of tongues is one of the most convincing 
 bits of evidence to be gleaned from Cardan's writings of 
 the insanity which undoubtedly afflicted him, at least 
 periodically, at this crisis of his life. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 AFTER the accusation brought against him at Milan 
 in 1562, Cardan had been prohibited from teaching or 
 lecturing in that city, and similar disabilities had followed 
 his recent imprisonment at Bologna. At Rome no duties 
 of this kind awaited him, so he had full time to follow 
 his physician's calling after taking up his residence there. 
 He records the cure of a noble matron, Clementina 
 Massa, and of Cesare Buontempo, a jurisconsult, both 
 of whom had been suffering for nearly two years. The 
 circumstances of his retirement from Bologna would not 
 affect his reputation as a physician, and he seems to 
 have had in Rome as many or even more patients 
 than he cared to treat ; and in writing in general terms 
 concerning his successes as a healer, he says : " In all, I 
 restored to health more than a hundred patients, given 
 up as incurable in Milan, in Bologna, and in Rome." Of 
 all the friends Cardan had in this closing period of his 
 life, none was more useful or benevolent than Cardinal 
 Alciati, who, although he had been secretary to Pius IV., 
 contrived to retain the favour of his successor. This 
 piece of good fortune Alciati owed to the protection of 
 Carlo Borromeo, who had been his pupil at Pavia, and 
 had procured for him from Pius IV. a bishopric, a car- 
 dinal's hat, and the secretaryship of Dataria. Another 
 of Cardan's powerful friends was the Prince of Matellica, 
 
 233 
 
234 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 of whom he speaks in terms of praise inflated enough 
 to be ridiculous, were it not for the accompanying note 
 of pathos. After celebrating the almost divine char- 
 acter of this nobleman, his munificence and his super- 
 human abilities, he goes on : " What could there be in 
 me to win the kindly notice of such a patron ? Certainly 
 I had done him no service, nor could he hope I should 
 ever do him any in the future, I, an old man, an outcast 
 of fortune, and prostrated by calamity. In sooth, there 
 was naught about me to attract him ; if indeed he found 
 any merit in me, it must have been my uprightness." 
 
 Powerful friends are never superfluous, and Cardan 
 seems to have needed them in Rome as much as in 
 Bologna. In 1573 he again hints at plots against his 
 life, but almost immediately after recording his suspicions 
 he goes on to suggest that his danger had arisen chiefly 
 from his ignorance of the streets of Rome, and from the 
 uncouth manners of the populace. " Many physicians, 
 more cautious than myself, and better versed in the 
 customs of the place, have come by their death from 
 similar cause." The dangpr, whatever its nature, seems 
 to have threatened him as a member of the practising 
 faculty at Rome rather than as the persecuted px-teacher 
 of Pavia and Bologna. Rodolfo Sylyestro was not 
 the only one of his former associates near him in his 
 old age, for he notes that Simone Sosia, who had been 
 his famulus at Pavia in 15(62, was still in his service at 
 Rome. 
 
 In reviewing the machinations of his enemies to bring 
 about his dismissal from the Professorship at Bologna, 
 Cardan indulges in the reflection that these men unwill- 
 ingly did him good service, that is, they procured him 
 leisure which he might use in the completion of his un- 
 finished works, and in the construction of fresh monu- 
 
JEROME CARDAN 235 
 
 ments which he proposed to build up out of the vast 
 store of material accumulated in his industrious brain. 
 The literary record of his life in Rome shows that this 
 was no vain saying. He was at work on the later 
 chapters of the De Vita Propria up to the last weeks 
 of his life ; and, scattered about these, there are records 
 of his work of correction and revising. While telling of 
 the books he has lately been engaged with, he wanders 
 off in the same sentence to talk of the dream which 
 urged him to write the De Subtilitate, and of the execu- 
 tion of the Commentarii in Ptolom<zum y during his voyage 
 down the Loire. In 1573 he seems to have found the 
 mass of undigested work more than he could bear to 
 behold ; for, after making extracts of such matter as he 
 deemed worth keeping, he consigned to the flames no 
 less than a hundred and twenty of his manuscripts. 1 
 Before leaving Bologna he had put into shape the 
 Proxenata, a lengthy collection of hints, maxims, and re- 
 flections as to everyday life ; he had re-edited the Liber 
 Artis Magncs y and had added thereto the treatise De 
 Proportionibus, and the Regula Aliza. He also took 
 in hand two books on Geometry, and one on Music, and 
 this last he completed in 1574. On November 16, 1574, 
 he records that he is at that moment writing an ex- 
 planation of the more abstruse works of Hippocrates, 
 but that he is yet far from the end of his task. 
 
 In the De Libris Propriis he gives a list of all his 
 
 1 " Qua causa permotus sim ad scribendum, superius intellexisse 
 te existimo, quippe somnio monitus, inde bis, terque, ac quater, ac 
 pluries, ut alias testatus sum ; sed et desiderio perpetuandi nominis. 
 Bis autem magnam copiam ac numerum eorum perdidi ; primum 
 circa XXXVII annum, cum circiter IX. libros exussi, quod 
 vanos ac nullius utilitatis futures esse intelligerem ; anno autem 
 MDLXXIII alios CXX libros, cum jam calamitas ilia cessasset 
 cremavi." De Vita Propriety ch. xlv. pp. 174, 175. 
 
236 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 published works, and likewise a table of the same 
 arranged in the order in which they ought to be read. 
 He apologizes for the imperfect state in which some of 
 them are left, and declares that the sight of his un- 
 finished tasks never fails to awaken in his breast a bitter 
 sense of resentment over that loss which he had never 
 ceased to mourn. " At one time I hoped," he writes, 
 " that these works would be corrected by my son, but 
 this favour you see has been denied to me. The desire 
 of my enemies was not to make an end of him, but of 
 me ; not by gentle means, in sooth, but by cruel open 
 murder ; to let me fall in the very blood of my son." 
 It is somewhat remarkable that in this matter Cardan 
 was destined to suffer a disappointment similar to that 
 which he himself brought upon his own father by refus- 
 ing to qualify himself to become the commentator on 
 Archbishop Peckham's Perspectives. He next gives the 
 names of all those who had commended him in their 
 works, and finds a special cause for gratification in the 
 fact that, out of the long list set down, only four or five 
 were known to him personally, and these not intimately. 
 There is, however, another short list of censors ; and of 
 these he affirms that a certain Brodeus alone is worthy 
 of respect. Of Buteon, who criticized the treatise on 
 Arithmetic, he says : "Est plane stultus et elleboro indiget" 
 Tartaglia's name is there, and he, according to Cardan, 
 was forced to eat his words ; " but he was ashamed to 
 do what he promised, and unwilling to blot out what he 
 had written. He went on in his wrong-headed course, 
 living upon the labour of other men like a greedy crow, 
 a manifest robber of other men's wealth of study ; so 
 impudent that he published as his own, in the Italian 
 tongue, that invention for the raising of sunken ships 
 which I had made known four years before. This he 
 
JEROME CARDAN 237 
 
 did, understanding the subject only imperfectly, and 
 making no mention of my name. But men of real 
 learning also attacked me : Rondeletius, and Julius 
 Scaliger ; and Fuchsius, in the proem of his book, says 
 that my work Medicines Contradictiones should be 
 avoided like deadly poison. Julius Scaliger has been 
 fully answered in the Apologia in the Books on 
 Subtlety." 1 
 
 There is a passage from De Thou's History of his Own 
 Times, affixed to all editions of the De Vita Propria? in 
 which is given a contemporary sketch of Cardan during 
 his residence at Rome. " His whole life," De Thou 
 writes, " has been as strange as his present manners, and 
 he, in sooth, out of singleness of mind or frankness, has 
 written about himself certain statements, the like of 
 which have never before been heard of a man of letters, 
 and these I do not feel bound to unfold to any one, 
 let him be ever so curious. I, myself, happening 
 to be in Rome a few years before his death, often 
 spoke to him and observed him with astonishment 
 as he took his walks about the city clad in strange 
 garb. When I considered the many writings of this 
 famous man, I could perceive in him nothing to justify 
 his great renown. Wherefore I am all the more inclined 
 to turn to that very acute criticism of Julius Caesar 
 Scaliger, who exercised his extraordinary genius in 
 making a special examination of the treatise De Sub- 
 tilitate Rerum. He, having carefully noted everywhere 
 the unequal powers of this writer, decided that he was 
 one who, in certain subjects, knew more than a man 
 could know, while in others he seemed more simple than 
 a child. In the science of Arithmetic he worked hard 
 
 1 Opera, torn. i. p. 122. 
 
 2 De Vita Propria, p. 232. 
 
238 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 and made many discoveries ; but he was subject to 
 strange and excessive aberration of mind, and was guilty 
 of the most impudent blasphemy, in that he was minded 
 to subject to the artificial laws of the stars the Ruler of 
 the stars Himself, for this thing he did in the horoscope 
 of our Saviour which he drew." 
 
 Another witness of his life in Rome is Frangois 
 d'Amboise, a young French nobleman, who was engaged 
 on his book De Symbolis Heroicis. He says that he 
 saw Cardan, who was living in a spacious house, on the 
 walls of which, in place of elegant paintings or vari- 
 coloured tapestries, were written the words, " Tempus mea 
 possessio? 
 
 In his later writings there are farther indications that 
 he was wont to conjure up omens and portents chiefly at 
 those times when he was in danger and mental distress. 
 In the case which is given below, the omen showed itself 
 in a season of trouble, but Cardan, in describing it later, 
 treats it as if he were a modern scientist. The distress- 
 ing memories of the imprisonment had faded, and writ- 
 ing in ease and security at Rome he begins to rationalize. 
 In the dialogue between himself and his father, written 
 shortly before his death, Fazio calls his son's attention 
 to certain of the omens and portents already noticed ; 
 and, after discussing these, Jerome goes on to tell for 
 the first time of another boding event which, as he 
 affirms, distressed him even more than the loss of his 
 office and the prohibition to publish his books. On the 
 day of his incarceration, on two different occasions, he 
 met a cow being driven to the slaughter-house, with 
 much shouting and beating with sticks and barking of 
 dogs. The explanation of this event which he puts in 
 Fazio's mouth is entirely conceived in the spirit of 
 rationalism. What was there to wonder at ? There was 
 
JEROME CARDAN 239 
 
 a butcher's shop in the street, and animals going to 
 slaughter would naturally be met there. Why should 
 a man fear to meet a cow ? If it had been a bull there 
 might have been something in it. Then with regard to 
 the shaking of a window-casement ; this might easily 
 have been occasioned by the flight of a bird. 1 He was 
 certainly less inclined to put faith in the warnings of the 
 stars and in the lines of his hand. His line of life was 
 very short and irregular, intersected and bifurcated, 
 while the rest of the lines were little thicker than hairs. 
 In his horoscope was a certain malefic influence which 
 threatened that his life would be cut short before his 
 forty-fifth year. " But," he writes in the year before his 
 death, " here I am, living at the age of seventy-five." 2 
 The one supernatural idea which seems to have 
 deepened with old age and remained undisturbed to 
 the end was his belief in his attendant genius. In 
 what he wrote during his last years his mood was almost 
 entirely introspective, contemplative, and didactic, yet 
 here and there he introduces a sentence which lets in 
 a little light from his way of life and personal affairs, 
 and helps to show how he occupied himself, and what 
 his humour was. He tells how one day, in 1576, he was 
 writing about the fennel plant in his treatise De Tuenda 
 Sanitate^ a plant which he praised highly because it 
 pleased his palate. But shortly afterwards, when he 
 was walking one day in the Roman vegetable market, 
 an old man, shabbily dressed, met him and dissuaded 
 him from the use of the plant aforesaid, saying : " In 
 Galen's opinion you may as readily meet your death 
 
 1 Opera, torn. i. p. 639. In the De Varietate he says that 
 natural causes may in most cases be found for seeming marvels. 
 " Ecce auditur strepitus in domo, potest esse mus, felis, ericius, 
 aut quod tigna subsidant blatta." p. 624. 
 
 2 De Vita Propria^ ch. xli. p. 152. 
 
240 
 
 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 thereby as by eating hemlock." " I answered that I 
 knew well enough the difference between hemlock and 
 fennel, but the old man said, ' Take care, I know what 
 I am saying,' and went on murmuring something about 
 Galen. Whereupon I went home and found in Galen a 
 passage I had not hitherto noticed, and, having changed 
 my former views, I added many fresh excerpts to my 
 treatise." 
 
 Although his faith may have been shaken in ' the 
 ability of the stars to govern his own fortunes, he 
 records a case in which he -himself filled the post of 
 vateS) and which came to a sudden and terrible issue. 
 Cardan was present at a supper-party, and in the course 
 of conversation let fall the remark, " I should like to 
 say something, were I not afraid that my words would 
 disturb the company," to which one of the guests 
 replied, " You mean that you would prophesy death to 
 one of us here present." Cardan replied, " Yes, within 
 the present year," and in the next sentence he tells 
 how on the first day of December in that same year 
 a certain young man, named Virgilius, who had been 
 present at the gathering aforesaid, died, and he sets 
 down this event as a fulfilment of his prophecy. 
 
 But in the same chapter he lets the reader into the 
 secret of his system of prophecy, and displays it as 
 simply an affair of common-sense, one recommended by 
 Aristotle as the only trustworthy method of divining 
 future events. Cardan writes : " I used to inquire what 
 might be the exact nature of the business in hand, and 
 began by making myself acquainted with the character 
 of the locality, the ways of the people, and the quality 
 of the chief actors. I unfolded a vast number of 
 historical instances, leading events and secret transac- 
 tions as well, and then, when I had confirmed the facts 
 
JEROME CARDAN 241 
 
 set forth by my method of art, I gave my judgment 
 thereupon." x 
 
 In his latter years Cardan must have been in easy 
 circumstances. The pension from the Pope no mention 
 is made of its amount and the fees he received from 
 his patients allowed him to keep a carriage ; and writing 
 in his seventy-fifth year, he says that no fees would 
 tempt him to join any consultation unless he should /be 
 well assured what sort of men he was expected to meet. 2 
 
 In the Norma Vitce Consarcinata* he relates how in 
 April 1576 there were two inmates of the Xenodochium 
 at Rome, Troilus and Dominicus. It seemed that 
 Troilus exercised some strange and malefic influence 
 over his companion, who was taken with fever. He got 
 well of this, but only to fall into a dropsy, which de- 
 spatched him in a week. Shortly before his death, at 
 the seventh hour, he cried out to two Spaniards who 
 were standing by the bed that he had suffered such 
 great torture from the working of Troilus, and that he 
 was dying therefrom. " Therefore," he cried, " in your 
 presence I summon him with my dying words to appear 
 before God's tribunal, that he may give an account of 
 all the evil he has wrought against me." On the follow- 
 ing day there came a messenger from Corneto, a few 
 miles from Rome, saying that Troilus, who was sojourn- 
 ing there, had fallen sick. The physician inquired at 
 what hour, and the messenger said it was at seven 
 o'clock, a day or two ago. He lay ill some days, an 
 unfavourable case, but not a desperate one, and one 
 night shortly afterwards at seven o'clock, the top of the 
 mosquito curtains fell, and he died at exactly the same 
 hour as Dominicus. 
 
 1 De Vita Propria, chapter xlii., passim. 
 
 2 Ibid.) p. 66. 3 Opera, torn. i. p. 339. 
 
242 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 He tells another long story of an adventure which 
 befell him in May 1576. One day he was driving in 
 his carriage in the Forum, when he remembered that he 
 wanted to see a certain jeweller who lived in a narrow 
 alley close by. Wherefore he told his coachman, a 
 stupid fellow, to go to the Campo Altoviti, and await 
 him there. The coachman drove off apparently under- 
 standing the order ; but, instead of going to the place 
 designated, went somewhere else ; so Cardan, when he 
 set about to find his carriage, sought in vain. He had 
 a notion that the man had gone to a spot near the 
 citadel, so he walked thither, encumbered with the 
 thick garments he had put on as necessary for riding 
 in the carriage. Just then he met a friend of his, 
 Vincenzio, a Bolognese musician, who remarked that 
 Cardan was not in his carriage as usual. The old man 
 went on towards the citadel, but saw nothing of the 
 carriage ; and now he began to be seriously troubled, 
 for there was naught else to be done but to go back 
 over the bridge, and he was wearied with long fasting 
 and his heavy clothes. He might indeed have asked 
 for the loan of a carriage from the Governor of the 
 castle ; but he was unwilling to do this, so having com- 
 mended himself to God, he resolved to use all his 
 patience and prudence in finding his way back. He 
 set out, and when he had crossed the bridge, he entered 
 the banking-house of the Altoviti to inquire as to the 
 alteration in the rate of exchange on Naples, and there 
 sat down to rest. While the banker was giving him 
 this information, the Governor entered the place, where- 
 upon Cardan went out and there he found his carriage, 
 the driver having been informed by Vincenzio, whom he 
 had met, of the mistake he had made. Cardan got 
 into the carriage, and while he was wondering whether 
 
JEROME CARDAN 243 
 
 or not he had better go home and break his fast, he 
 found three raisins in his pocket, and thus made a 
 fortunate ending of all his difficulties. 
 
 All this reads like a commonplace chapter of ac- 
 cidents ; but the events recorded did not present 
 themselves to Cardan in this guise. He sits down to 
 moralize over the succession of momentary events : his 
 meeting with Vincenzio ; Vincenzio's meeting with the 
 driver, and directions given to the man to drive to the 
 money-changers' ; the presence of the Governor, his exit 
 from the bank, his consequent meeting with the carriage, 
 and his discovery of the raisins, seven occurrences in all, 
 any one of which, if it had happened a little sooner or 
 a little later, would have brought about great incon- 
 venience, or even worse. He does not deny that other 
 men may not now and then encounter like experiences, 
 but the experiences of other men were not fraught with 
 such momentous crises, nor did they foreshadow so 
 many or grave dangers. 
 
 The chronicling of this episode and the fanciful 
 coincidence of the deaths of Dominicus and Troilus 
 may be taken as evidence that his idiosyncrasies were 
 becoming aggravated by the decay of his faculties. 
 Writing on October I, 1576, he makes mention of the 
 various testaments he had already made, and goes on 
 to say that he had resolved to make a new and final 
 disposition of his goods. He would fain have let his 
 property descend to his immediate offspring, but with a 
 son like Aldo this was impossible, so he left all to 
 Gian Battista's son, who would now be a youth about 
 eighteen years of age, Aldo getting nothing. He 
 desired, for reasons best known to himself, that all his 
 descendants should remain in curatela as long as 
 possible, and that all his property should be held on 
 
244 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 trust ; if the issue of his body should fail, then the suc- 
 cession should pass in perpetuity to his kinsfolk on the 
 father's side. He desired that his works should be 
 corrected and printed, and that, if heirs failed entirely, 
 his house at Bologna should pass to the University, and 
 be styled, after his family, Collegium Cardanorum. 
 
 There is no authentic record of the exact date of 
 Cardan's death. De Thou, in writing the record of 
 1576, says that if Cardan's life had been prolonged by 
 three days he would have completed his seventy-fifth 
 year. As Cardan's birthday was September 24, 1501, 
 this would fix his death on September 21, 1576. The 
 exact figures given by De Thou are : " eodem, quo 
 praedixerat, anno et die, videlicet XL Kalend. VIIL," 
 and he adds by way of information that a belief was 
 current at the time that Cardan, who had foretold how 
 he would die on this day and in this year, had abstained 
 from food for some days previous to his death in order 
 to make the fatal day square with the prophecy. 
 
 But the details which Cardan himself has set down 
 concerning the last few weeks of his life are inconsistent 
 with the facts chronicled by De Thou. In the De Vita 
 Propria, chapter xxxvi., Cardan records how on October I, 
 1576, he set to work to make his last will and testament, 
 wherefore if credit is to be given to his version rather 
 than to that of De Thou, he was alive and active some 
 days after the date of his death as fixed by the chronicler. 
 In cases where the record of an event of his early life 
 given in the De Vita Propria differs from an account of 
 the same in some contemporary writing, the testimony 
 of the De Vita Propria may justly be put aside ; but 
 in this instance he was writing of something which could 
 only have happened a few days past, and the balance 
 of probability is that he was right and De Thou wrong. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 245 
 
 Bayle notices this discrepancy, and in the same para- 
 graph taxes De Thou with a mistake of which he is 
 innocent. He states that De Thou placed the date of 
 Cardan's death in 1575, whereas the excerpt cited above 
 runs: "Thuanus ad annum MDLXXVI., p. 136, lib. 
 Ixii. torn. 4. Romae magni nominis sive Mathematicus, 
 sive Medicus Hieronymus Cardanus Mediol. natus hoc 
 anno itidem obiit." 
 
 No mention is made of the disease to which Cardan 
 finally succumbed. Had his frame not been of the 
 strongest and most wiry, it must have gone to pieces 
 long before through the havoc wrought by the severe and 
 continuous series of ailments with which it was afflicted; 
 so it seems permissible to assume that he died of natural 
 decay. His body was interred in the church of Sant 
 Andrea at Rome, and was subsequently transferred to 
 Milan to be deposited finally under the stone which 
 covered the bones of his father in the church of San 
 Marco. J This tomb, which Jerome had erected after 
 Fazio's death, bore the following inscription : 
 
 FACIO CARDANO 
 
 i.e. 
 
 Mors fuit id quod vixi : vitam mors dedit ipsa, 
 Mens aeterna manet, gloria tuta quies. 
 
 Obiit anno MDXXIV. IV. Kalend. Sept. anno ^Etatis LXXX. 
 Hieronymus Cardanus Medicus Parenti posterisque V.P. 1 
 
 1 Tomasinus, Gymnasium Patavinum. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE estimates hitherto made concerning Cardan's 
 character appear to have been influenced too completely, 
 one way or the other, by the judgment pronounced upon 
 him by Gabriel Naude, and prefixed to all editions of 
 the De Vita Propria. Some writers have been disposed 
 to treat Naude as a hide-bound pedant, insensible to 
 the charm of genius, and the last man who ought to be 
 trusted as the valuator of a nature so richly gifted, 
 original, and erratic as was Cardan's. Such critics are 
 content to regard as black anything which Naude calls 
 white and vice versa. Others accept him as a witness 
 entirely trustworthy, and adopt as a true description of 
 Cardan the paragraphs made up of uncomplimentary ad- 
 jectives applied by Cardan to himself which Naude 
 has transferred from the De Vita Propria and the 
 Geniturarum Exempla to his Judicium de Cardano. 
 P It may be conceded at once that the impression re- 
 ! ceived from a perusal of this criticism is in the main an 
 unfavourable one of Cardan as a man, although Naude 
 shows himself no niggard of praise when he deals with 
 Cardan's achievements in Medicine and Mathematics. 
 But in appraising the qualifications of Naude* to act as 
 a judge in this case, it will be necessary to bear in mind 
 the fact that he was in his day a leading exponent of 
 liberal opinions, the author of a treatise exposing the 
 
 246 
 
JEROME CARDAN 247 
 
 mummeries and sham mysteries of the Rosicrucians, and 
 of an " Apologie pour les Grands Hommes soupgonnez 
 de Magic," and a disbeliever in supernatural manifesta- 
 tions of every kind. With a mind thus attuned it is no 
 matter of surprise that Naude should have been led to 
 speak somewhat severely when called upon to give 
 judgment on a man saturated as Cardan was with the 
 belief in sorcery, witches, and attendant demons. 
 
 If Naude indeed set to work with the intention of 
 drawing a figure of Cardan which should stand out a 
 sinister apparition in the eyes of posterity, his task was 
 an easy one. All he had to do was to place Jerome 
 Cardan himself in the witness-box. Reference to the 
 passages already quoted will show that, in the whole 
 corpus of autobiographic literature, there does not exist 
 a volume in which the work of self-dissection has been 
 so ruthlessly and completely undertaken and executed 
 as in Cardan's memoirs. It has all the vices of an old 
 man's book ; it is garrulous, vain-glorious, and full of 
 needless repetition ; but, whatever portion of his life 
 may be under consideration, the author never shrinks 
 from holding up to the world's gaze the result of his 
 searches in the deepest abysses of his conscience. Auto- 
 biographers, as a rule, do not feel themselves subject to 
 a responsibility so deep as this. Memory turns back 
 to the contemplation of certain springs of action, certain 
 achievements in the past, making a judicious selection 
 from these, and excerpting only such as promise to 
 furnish the possible reader with a pleasing impression of 
 the personality of the subject. With material of this 
 sort at hand, the autobiographer sets to work to con- 
 struct a fair and gracious monument, being easily per- 
 suaded that it would be a barbarous act to mar its 
 symmetry by the introduction of loathly and misshapen 
 
248 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 blocks like those which Cardan, had he been the artist, 
 would have chosen first of all. 
 
 Naude, after he has recorded the fact that, from his 
 first essay in letters, he had been a zealous and apprecia- 
 tive student of Cardan's works, sets down Cardan's 
 picture of himself, taken from his own Horoscope in the 
 Geniturarum Exempla^ "nugacem, religionis contemp- 
 torem, injuriae illatae memorem, invidum, tristem, in- 
 sidiatorem, proditorem, magum, incantatorem, frequenti- 
 bus calamitatibus obnoxium, suorum osore, turpi libidini 
 deditum, solitarium, inamoenum, austerum, sponte 
 etiam divinantem, zelotypum, lascivum, obscoenum, 
 maledicum, obsequiosum, senum conversatione se delec- 
 tantem, varium, ancipitem, impuru, et dolis mulierum 
 obnoxium, calumniatorem, et omnino incognitum propter 
 naturae et morum repugnantiam, etiam his cum quibus 
 assidue versor." The critic at once goes on to state 
 that in his opinion this description, drawn by the person 
 who ought to know best, is, in the main, a correct one. 
 What better account could you expect, he asks, of a 
 man who put faith in dreams and portents and auguries; 
 who believed fully in the utterances of crazy beldames, 
 who saw ghosts, and who believed he was attended by 
 a familiar demon ? Then follows a catalogue of moral 
 offences and defects of character, all taken from Cardan's 
 own confessions, and a pronunciation by Naude" that 
 the man who says he never lies, must be of all liars the 
 greatest ; the charge of mendacity being driven home 
 by references to Cardan's alleged miraculous compre- 
 hension of the classic tongues in a single night, and his 
 pretended knowledge of a cure for phthisis. There is no 
 need to follow Naude" farther in his diatribe against the 
 faults and imperfections, real and apparent, of Cardan's 
 character; these must be visible enough to the most 
 
JEROME CARDAN 249 
 
 cursory student. Passages like these arouse the sus- 
 picion that Maude* knew books better than men, that at 
 any rate he did not realize that men are to be found, 
 and not seldom, who take pleasure in magnifying their 
 foibles into gigantic follies, and their peccadilloes into 
 atrocious crimes ; while the rarity is to come across one 
 who will set down these details with the circumstantiality 
 used by Cardan. There is one defect in the De Vita 
 Propria an artistic one which Naude does not notice, 
 namely, that in his narrative of his early days Cardan 
 often over-reaches himself. His show of extreme ac- 
 curacy destroys the perspective of the story, and, in 
 his anxiety to be minute over the sequence of his 
 childish ailments, the most trivial details of his uneasy 
 dreams, and the cuffs he got from his father and his 
 Aunt Margaret, he confuses the reader with multi- 
 tudinous particulars and ceases to be dramatic. But 
 the hallucinations which he nourished about himself 
 were not all the outcome of senility. In the De Varietate, 
 the work upon which he spent the greatest care, and 
 the product moreover of his golden prime, he gives an 
 account of four marvellous properties with which he was 
 gifted. 1 The first of these was the power to pass, when- 
 ever the whim seized him, from sense into a kind of 
 ecstasy. While he was in this state he could hear but 
 faintly the sound of voices, and could not distinguish 
 spoken words. Whether he would be sensitive to any 
 great pain he could not say, but twitchings and the 
 sharpest attacks of gout affected him not. When he 
 fell into this state he felt a certain separation about the 
 heart, as if his soul were departing from that region and 
 taking possession of his whole body, a door being opened 
 for the passage of the same. The sensation would begin 
 1 De Varietate^ p. 314. 
 
250 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 in the cerebellum, and thence would be diffused along 
 the spine. The one thing of which he was fully conscious, 
 was that he had passed out of himself. The second 
 property was that, when he would, he could conjure up 
 any images he liked before his eyes, real ctdwAa, and not 
 at all to be compared with the blurred processions of 
 phantoms which he was wont to see when he was a child. 
 At the time when he wrote, perhaps by reason of his 
 busy life, he no longer saw them whensoever he would, 
 nor so perfectly expressed, nor for so long at a time. 
 These images constantly gave place one to another, and 
 he would behold groves, and animals, and orbs, and 
 whatever he was fain to see. This property he at- 
 tributed to the force of his imaginative power, and his 
 clearness of vision. The third property was that he 
 never failed to be warned in dreams of things about to 
 happen to him ; and the fourth was that premonitory 
 signs of coming events would display themselves in the 
 form of spots on his nails. The signs of evil were black 
 or livid, and appeared on the middle finger ; white spots 
 on the same nail portending good fortune. Honours 
 were indicated on the thumb, riches on the fore-finger, 
 matters relating to his studies and of grave import on 
 the third finger, and minor affairs on the little finger. 
 
 In putting together the record of his life, Cardan 
 eschewed the narrative form and followed a method of 
 his own. He collected the details of his qualities, habits, 
 and adventures in separate chapters ; his birth and 
 lineage, his physical stature, his diet, his rule of life, his 
 imperfections, his poverty, the misfortunes of his sons, 
 his masters and pupils, his travels, his experiences of 
 things beyond nature, his cures, the persecutions of his 
 foes, and divers other categories being grouped together 
 to make up the De Vita Propria, which, though it is 
 
JEROME CARDAN 251 
 
 the most interesting book he has left behind him, is 
 certainly the most clumsy and chaotic from a literary 
 point of view. The chapters for the most part begin 
 with his early years, and end with some detail as to his 
 life in Rome, each one being a categorical survey of a 
 certain side of his life ; but remarks as to his personal 
 peculiarities are scattered about from beginning to end. 
 He tells how he could always see the moon in broad 
 daylight ; 1 of his passion for wandering about the city 
 by night carrying arms forbidden by the law ; of his 
 practice of self-torture, beating his legs with a switch, 
 twisting his fingers, pinching his flesh, and biting his 
 left arm ; and of going about within doors with naked 
 legs ; how at one time he was possessed with the desire, 
 heroica passio, of suicide ; of his habit of filling his house 
 with pets of all sorts kids, lambs, hares, rabbits, and 
 storks. The chapter in which he records all the maladies 
 which afflicted him, puts upon the reader's credulity a 
 burden almost as heavy as is the catalogue given by 
 another philosopher of the number of authors he mastered 
 before his twelfth year. Two attacks of the plague, 
 agues, tertian and quotidian, malignant ulcers, hernia, 
 haemorrhoids, varicose veins, palpitation of the heart, 
 gout, indigestion, the itch, and foulness of skin. Relief 
 in the second attack of plague came from a sweat so 
 copious that it soaked the bed and ran in streams down 
 to the floor ; and, in a case of continuous fever, from 
 voiding a hundred and twenty ounces of urine. As a 
 boy he was a sleep-walker, and he never became warm 
 below the knees till he had been in bed six hours, a cir- 
 cumstance which led his mother to predict that his time 
 on earth would be brief. 
 
 Cardan lived an abstemious life. He broke his fast 
 1 De Vita Propriety ch. xxxvii. p. 115. 
 
252 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 on bread-and-water and a few grapes. He sometimes 
 dined off bread, the yolk of an egg, and a little wine, 
 and would take for supper a mess of beetroot and rice 
 and a chicory salad. The catalogue of his favourite 
 dishes seems to exhaust every known edible, and it 
 will suffice to remark that he was specially inclined to 
 sound and well-stewed wild boar, the wings of young 
 cockerels and the livers of pullets, oysters, mussels, 
 fresh-water crayfish because his mother ate greedily 
 thereof when she was pregnant with him ; but of all 
 dishes he rates the best a carp from three pounds weight 
 to seven, taken from a good feeding-ground. He 
 praises all sweet fruit, oil, olives, and finds in rue 
 an antidote to poison. Ten o'clock was his hour for 
 going to bed, and he allowed himself eight hours' sleep. 
 When wakeful he would walk about the room and repeat 
 the multiplication table. As a further remedy for 
 sleeplessness he would reduce his food by half, and 
 would anoint his thighs, the soles of his feet, the neck, 
 the elbows, the carpal bones, the temples, the jugulars, 
 the region of the heart and of the liver, and the upper 
 lip with ointment of poplars, or the fat of bear, or the 
 oil of water-lilies. 
 
 These few extracts will show that an intelligible 
 narrative could scarcely be produced by the methods 
 Cardan used. The book is a collection of facts, classi- 
 fied as a scientific writer would arrange the sections and 
 subsections of his subject. In gathering together and 
 grouping the leading points of his life, a method some- 
 what similar to his own will suffice, but there will be no 
 need to descend to a subdivision so minute as his own. 
 A task of this sort is never an easy one, and in this 
 instance the difficulties are increased by the diffuse and 
 complicated nature of the subject matter ; and because, 
 
JEROME CARDAN 253 
 
 owing to Cardan's wayward mental habit, there is no 
 saying in what corner of the ten large folios which 
 contain his writings some pregnant and characteristic 
 sentence, picturing effectively some aspect of his nature 
 or perhaps exhibiting the man at a glance, may not be 
 hidden away. 
 
 It must not be inferred, because Cardan himself and 
 his critics after him, have laid such great stress upon his 
 vices and imperfections, that he was devoid of virtues. 
 The most striking and remarkable of his merits was his 
 industry, but even in this particular instance, where his 
 excellence is most clearly manifest, he is constantly 
 lamenting his waste of time and idleness. Again and 
 again he mourns over the precious hours he has spent 
 over chess and dice and games of chance. In his 
 counsels to his children, he compares a gambler to a 
 sink of all the vices, and in writing of his early life at 
 Sacco he describes himself as an idle profligate, and tells 
 how he entirely neglected his profession. If indeed such 
 monstrous cantles were cut out of his time through 
 idleness he must, though his life proved a long one, have 
 possessed extraordinary power of rapid production ; for 
 the huge mass of his published work, without taking 
 any account of the many manuscripts he burned from 
 time to time, would, in the case of most men, represent 
 the ceaseless labour of a long life. And the corpus is 
 not great by reason of haste or want of finish. He has 
 recorded more than once how it was ever his habit to 
 let his work be polished to the utmost before putting it 
 in type. The citations with which his pages bristle 
 proclaim him to be a reader almost as voracious and 
 catholic as Burton ; and Naude, with the watchfulness 
 of the hostile critic in his heart and the bookworm's 
 knowledge in his brain, would have been ready and able 
 
254 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 to convict him of quoting authors he had not read, if the 
 least handle for this charge should have been given, but 
 no accusation of the kind is preferred. The story of 
 his life shows him to be full of rough candour and 
 honesty, and unlikely to descend to subterfuge, while 
 his great love of reading and his accurate retentive 
 memory would make easy for him a task which ordinary 
 mortals might well regard as hopeless. 
 
 Those critics who pass judgment on Cardan, taken 
 solely as a Physician or as a Mathematician, will give a 
 presentment more fallacious than imperfect generaliza- 
 tions usually furnish, for in Cardan's case the man, 
 taken as a whole, was incomparably greater than the 
 sum of his parts. Naude remarks that a man who 
 knows a little of everything, and that little imperfectly, 
 deserves small respect as a citizen of the republic of 
 letters, but Cardan did not belong to this category, as 
 Julius Caesar Scaliger found to his cost. He was not 
 like the bookmen of the revival of learning Poliziano, 
 Valla, or Alberti may stand as examples who after 
 putting on the armour of the learned language and 
 saturating themselves with the litercs humaniores, made 
 excursions into some domain of science for the sake of 
 recreation. Cardan might rather be compared with 
 Varro or Theophrastus in classic, and with Erasmus, 
 Pico, Grotius, or Casaubon in modern times. On this 
 point Naud6 indulges in something approaching 
 panegyric. He writes " Investigation will show us that 
 many excelled him in the humanities or in Theology, 
 some even in Mathematics, some in Medicine and in the 
 knowledge of Philosophy, some in Oriental tongues and 
 in either side of Jurisprudence, but where shall we find 
 any one who had mastered so many sciences by himself, 
 who had plumbed so deeply the abysses of learning and 
 
JEROME CARDAN 255 
 
 had written such ample commentaries on the subjects he 
 studied? Assuredly in Philosophy, in Metaphysics, in 
 History, in Politics, in Morals, as well as in the more 
 abstruse fields of learning, nothing that was worth 
 consideration escaped his notice." 
 
 The foregoing eulogy from the pen of an adverse 
 critic gives eloquent testimony to Cardan's industry 
 and the catholicity of his knowledge. As to his in- 
 dustry, the record of his literary production, chronicled 
 incidentally in the course of the preceding pages, will 
 be evidence enough, seeing that, from the time when 
 he " commenced author," scarcely a year went by when 
 he did not print a volume of some sort or other ; to say 
 nothing of the production of those multitudinous un- 
 published MSS., of which some went to build up the 
 pile he burnt in his latter years in Rome, while others, 
 perhaps, are still mouldering in the presses of university 
 or city libraries of Italy. Frequent reference has been 
 made to the more noteworthy of his works. Books like 
 the De Vita Propria, the De Libris Propriis, the De 
 Utilitate ex Adversis Capienda> the Geniturarum Ex- 
 empla> the Theonoston, the Consilia Medica, the dialogues 
 Tetim and De Morte, have necessarily been drawn upon 
 for biographical facts. The De Subtilitate and the De 
 Varietate Rerum ; the Liber Artis Magnce, the Practica 
 Arithmetics, have been noticed as the most enduring 
 portions of his legacy to posterity; wherefore, before 
 saying the final word as to his literary achievement, it 
 may not be superfluous to give a brief glance at those 
 of his books which, although of minor importance to 
 those already cited, engaged considerable attention in 
 the lifetime of the writer. 
 
 The work upon which Cardan founded his chief hope 
 of immortality was his Commentary on Hippocrates. In 
 
256 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 bulk it ranks first easily, filling as it does one of the 
 large folios of the edition of 1663. Curiously enough, 
 in addition to a permanent place in the annals of 
 medicine, Cardan anticipated for this forgotten mass 
 of type a general and immediate popularity ; wider 
 than any which his technical works could possibly 
 enjoy, seeing that it dealt with the preservation of 
 health, the greatest mortal blessing, and must on this 
 account be of interest to all men. It will be enough to 
 remark of these commentaries that no portion of 
 Cardan's work yields less information as to the author's 
 life and personality ; to dilate upon them, ever so super- 
 ficially, from a scientific point of view, would be waste 
 of time and paper. Another of his works, which he 
 rated highly, was his treatise on Music. It was begun 
 during his tenure of office at Pavia, circa 1547, and he 
 was still at work upon it two years before his death. 1 
 It is not difficult to realize, even at this interval of time, 
 that this book at the date of its publication must have 
 been welcomed by all musical students as a valuable 
 contribution to the literature of their subject. It is 
 strongly marked by Cardan's particular touch, that 
 formative faculty by which he almost always succeeded 
 in stimulating fresh interest in the reader, and exhibiting 
 fresh aspects of whatever subject he might be treating. 
 This work begins by laying down at length the general 
 rules and principles of the art, and then goes on to treat 
 of ancient music in all its forms ; of music as Cardan 
 knew and enjoyed it ; of the system of counterpoint 
 and composition, and of the construction of musical 
 instruments. 
 
 The Commentary on Ptolemcei de Astrorum Judiciis, 
 
 1 " Musicam, sed hanc anno post VI. scilicet MDLXXIV. correxi 
 et transcribi curavi." De Vita Propria^ ch. xlv. p. 176. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 257 
 
 the writing of which beguiled the tedium of his voyage 
 down the Loire on his journey to Paris in 1552, is a 
 book upon which he spent great care, and is certainly 
 worthy of notice. Cardan's gratitude to Archbishop 
 Hamilton for the liberal treatment and gracious recep- 
 tion he had recently encountered in Scotland, prompted 
 him to dedicate this volume to his late patient. He 
 writes in the preface how he had expected to find the 
 Scots a pack of barbarians, but their country, he affirms, 
 is cultivated and humanized beyond belief, "and you 
 yourself reflect such splendour upon your nation that 
 now, by the very lustre of your name, it must needs 
 appear to the world more noble and illustrious than at 
 any time heretofore. What need is there for me to 
 speak of the school founded by you at St. Andrews, 
 of sedition quelled, of your country delivered, of the 
 authority of your brother the Regent vindicated ? These 
 are merely the indications of your power, and not the 
 source thereof." In the preface he also writes at length, 
 concerning the horoscope of Christ, 1 in a strain of 
 apology, as if he scented already the scandal which the 
 publication of this injudicious performance was destined 
 to raise. In estimating the influence of comets he sets 
 down several instances which had evidently been brought 
 to his notice during his sojourn in Scotland : how in 
 1165, within fourteen days of the appearance of a great 
 comet, Malcolm IV., known on account of his conti- 
 nence as the virgin king, fell sick and died. Again, 
 in 1214 two comets, one preceding and the other following 
 the sun, appeared as fore-runners of the death of King 
 William after a reign of forty-nine years. Perhaps the 
 most interesting of his comments on Ptolemy's text are 
 those which estimate the power of the stellar influences 
 
 1 This is on p. 164. 
 I s 
 
258 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 on the human frame, an aspect of the question which, 
 by reason of his knowledge of medicine and surgery, 
 would naturally engage his more serious attention. He 
 tells of the birth of a monstrous child a most loathsome 
 malformation at Middleton Stoney, near Oxford, during 
 his stay in England, 1 and gives many other instances of 
 the disastrous effects of untoward conjunction of the 
 planets upon infants born under the influence of the 
 same. He accuses monks and nuns of detestable vices 
 in the plainest words, words which were probably read 
 by the emissaries of the spiritual authority when the 
 charge of impiety was being got up against him. In the 
 Geniturarum Exempla the horoscopes of Edward VI., 
 Archbishop Hamilton, and Cardan himself have been 
 already noticed ; that of Sir John Cheke comes next in 
 interest to these, and, it must be admitted, is no more 
 trustworthy. It declares that Cheke would attain the 
 age of sixty-one years, that he would be most fortunate 
 in gathering wealth and friends around him, that he 
 would die finally of lingering disease, and involve many 
 in misfortune by his death a faulty guess, indeed, as to 
 the future of a man who died at forty-three, borne down 
 by the weight of his misfortunes, neglected and forgotten 
 by his former adherents, stripped of his wealth and 
 covered with shame, in that he had abjured his faith 
 to save a life which was so little worth preserving. 
 
 Naude" does not neglect to censure Cardan for his 
 maladroit attempts to read the future. He writes : 
 " This matter, forsooth, gave a ready handle to Cardan's 
 rivals, and especially to those who were sworn foes of 
 astrology ; so that they were able to jibe at him freely 
 because, neither in his own horoscope, nor in that of his 
 son Giovanni Battista, nor in that of Aymer Ranconet, 
 1 Page 266. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 259 
 
 nor in that of Edward VI., king of England, nor in any 
 other of the schemes that he drew, did he rightly foresee 
 any of the events which followed. He did not divine 
 that he himself was doomed to imprisonment, his son to 
 the halter, Ranconet to a violent death, and Edward to 
 a brief term of life, but predicted for each one of these 
 some future directly contrary." l 
 
 The treatise De Consolatione^ probably the best known 
 of Cardan's ethical works, was first published at Venice 
 in 1 542 by Girolamo Scoto, but it failed at first to please 
 the public taste. It was not until 1544, when it was 
 re-issued bound up with the De Sapientia and the first 
 version of the De Libris Propriis from the press of 
 Petreius at Nuremberg, that it met with any success. 
 Perhaps the sober tone and didactic method of this 
 treatise appealed more readily to the mood of the 
 German than of the Italian reader. From internal 
 evidence it is obvious that Cardan was urged to write it 
 by the desire of making known to the world the bitter 
 experience of his early literary and professional struggles. 
 In the opening paragraph he lets it be seen that he 
 
 intends to follow a Ciceronian model, and records his 
 
 ^r 
 
 regret that the lament of Cicero over his daughter's 
 death should have perished in the barbarian wars. The 
 original title of the book was The Accuser , to wit, some- 
 thing which might censure the vain passions and erring 
 tendencies of mankind, " at post mutato nomine, et in tres 
 libellos diviso, de Consolatione eum inscripsimus, quod 
 longe magis infelices consolatione, quam fortunati repre- 
 hensione, indigere viderentur." The subsequent success 
 of the book was probably due to this change of name, 
 though the author himself preferred to have discovered 
 
 1 Judicium de Cardano. 
 
2 6o JEROME CARDAN 
 
 a special reason for its early failure. 1 The plan of the 
 treatise is the same as that of a dozen others of the same 
 nature : an effort to persuade men in evil case that they 
 may find relief by regarding the misfortunes they suffer 
 as transitory accidents in no way affecting the chief end 
 of life, and by seeking happiness alone in trafficking 
 with the riches of the mind. 
 
 It is doubtful whether any of the books written with 
 this object have ever served their purpose, save in the 
 case of their originators. Cardan may have found the 
 burden of his failure and poverty grow lighter as he set 
 down his woes on paper, but the rest of the world must 
 have read the book for some other reason than the hope 
 of consolation. Read to-day in Bedingfield's quaint 
 English, the book is full of charm and interest. It is 
 filled with apt illustration from Greek philosophy and 
 from Holy Writ as well, and lighted up by spaces of 
 lively wit. It was accepted by the public taste for 
 reasons akin to those which would secure popularity for 
 a clever volume of essays at the present time, and was 
 translated into more than one foreign language, Beding- 
 field's translation being published some thirty years 
 after its first appearance. 
 
 The De Sapientia, with which it is generally classed, 
 is of far less interest. It is a series of ethical discourses, 
 lengthy and discursive, which must have seemed dull 
 enough to contemporary students : to read it through 
 now would be 'a task almost impossible. It is only 
 remembered because Cardan has inserted therein, some- 
 what incongruously, that account of his asserted cures 
 of phthisis which Cassanate quoted when he wrote to 
 Cardan about Archbishop Hamilton's asthma, and 
 
 1 Page 57. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 261 
 
 which were afterwards seized upon by hostile critics as 
 evidence of his disregard of truth. 
 
 Another of his minor works highly characteristic of 
 the author is the Somniorum Synesiorum^ a collection of 
 all the remarkable dreams he ever dreamt, many of 
 which have been already noticed. To judge from what 
 specimens of his epistles are extant, Cardan seems to have 
 been a good letter-writer. One of the most noteworthy 
 is that which he addressed to Gian Battista after his 
 marriage. It shows Cardan to have been a loving father 
 and a master of sapient exhortation, while the son's fate 
 gives melancholy testimony of the futility of good 
 counsel unaided by direction and example. He tells of 
 his grief at seeing the evil case into which his son had 
 fallen, vexed by poverty, disgrace, and loss of health, 
 how he would gladly even now receive the prodigal into 
 his house (he says nothing about the wife), did he not 
 fear that such a step would lead to his own ruin rather 
 than to his son's restoration. After showing that any 
 fresh misfortune to himself must needs cut away the last 
 hope for Gian Battista, he sketches out a line of conduct 
 for the ill-starred youth which he declared, if rightly 
 pursued, might re-establish his fortunes. 
 
 He begins by advising his son to read and lay to 
 heart the contents of the De Consolatione and the De 
 Utilitate^ and then, somewhat more to the purpose, 
 promises him half his earnings of the present and the 
 coming year. Beyond this Gian Battista should have 
 half the salary of any office which his father might get 
 for himself, and half of the piece of silk which he had 
 received from the Venetian Ambassador, supposing that 
 the young man should not be able to get a like piece 
 for himself from the same source. 
 
 He next cites the De Consolatione to demonstrate the 
 
262 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 futility of lamentation over misfortune past or present, 
 or indeed over any decree of fate. He bids Gian 
 Battista reflect that he is human not a brute, a man not 
 a woman, a Christian not a Moslem or Jew, an Italian 
 not a barbarian, sprung from a worthy city and family, 
 and from a father whose name by itself will prove a 
 title to fame. His only real troubles are a weak body 
 and infirm health one a gift of heredity, the other 
 aggravated by dissolute habits. It may be a vain thing 
 for men to congratulate themselves over their happiness, 
 but it is vainer for them to cry out for solace over past 
 calamity. Contempt of money is foolish, but contempt 
 of God is ten times worse. Cardan concludes this part 
 of his letter by reciting two maxims given him by his 
 father one, to have daily remembrance of God and of 
 His vast bounty, the other, to pursue with the utmost 
 diligence any task taken in hand. 
 
 Cardan then treats the scapegrace to a string of 
 maxims from the De Utilitate, maxims which a model 
 son might have read, but which Gian Battista would 
 certainly put aside unnoticed, and finishes with some 
 serviceable practical counsel : " Keep your mind calm, go 
 early to bed, for ours is a hot-blooded race and predis- 
 posed to suffer from stone. Take nine hours' sleep, rise 
 at six and visit your patients, being careful to use no 
 speech unconnected with the case before you. Avoid 
 heating your body to perspiration ; go forth on horse- 
 back, come back on foot ; and on your return put on 
 warm clothes. Drink little, break your fast on bread, 
 dried fish, and meat, and then give four hours to study, 
 for studies bring pleasure, relief from care, and mental 
 riches ; they are the foundations of renown, and enable a 
 man to do his duty with credit. See your patients 
 again ; and, before you sup, take exercise in the woods 
 
JEROME CARDAN 263 
 
 and fields adjacent. Should you become over-heated or 
 wet with rain, cast off and dry your damp clothes, and 
 don dry ones. Sup heartily, and go to bed at eight ; 
 and when, by the brevity of the night, this is not con- 
 venient, take a corresponding rest during the day. 
 Abstain from summer fruit, from black wine, from vain 
 overflow of talk, from falsehood and gaming, from trust- 
 ing a woman or over-indulging her, for she is a foolish 
 animal and full of deceit. Over-fondness towards a 
 woman will surely bring evil upon you. Bleed and 
 purge yourself as little as possible ; learn by experience 
 of other men's faults and misfortunes ; live frugally ; 
 bear yourself suavely to all men ; and let study be your 
 main end. All this and more have I set forth in the 
 books I have named. Trust neither promises nor hopes, 
 for these may be vain and delusive ; and reckon your 
 own only that which you hold in your hand. Farewell." 
 From the fact that Cardan took part in an unofficial 
 medical conference in Paris, that he afterwards super- 
 seded Cassanate as the Archbishop of St. Andrews' 
 physician, and did not find himself with a dozen or so 
 quarrels on his hands, it may be assumed that he was 
 laudably free from the jealousy attributed by tradition 
 to his profession. This instance becomes all the more 
 noteworthy when his natural irascibility, and the 
 character of the learned controversy of the times comes 
 to be considered. He does not spare his censure in re- 
 marking on the too frequent quarrels of men of letters, 1 
 albeit these quarrels must have lent no little gaiety to the 
 literary world. No one who reads the account of Gian 
 
 1 " Ita nostra aetate, lapsi sunt clarissimi alioqui viri in hoc 
 genere. Budaeus adversus Erasmum, Fuchsius adversus Corna- 
 rium, Silvius adversus Vesalium, Nizolius adversus Maioragium : 
 non tam credo justis contentionum causis, quam vanitate quadam 
 et spe augendae opinionis in hominibus." Opera, torn. i. p. 135. 
 
264 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 Battista's fate can doubt the sincerity of Cardan's 
 remorse for that neglect of the boy's youthful training 
 which helped to bring him to ruin, and the care which 
 he bestowed upon his grandson Fazio proved that his 
 regret was not of that sort which exhales itself in empty 
 words. The zeal with which he threw himself into the 
 struggle for his son's life, and his readiness to strip 
 himself of his last coin as the fight went on, show that 
 he was capable of warm-hearted affection, and afraid of 
 no sacrifice in the cause of duty. 
 
 The brutal candour which Cardan used in probing 
 the weaknesses of his own nature and in displaying 
 them to the world, he used likewise in his dealings with 
 others. If he detected Branda Porro or Camutio in a 
 blunder he would inform them they were blockheads 
 without hesitation, and plume himself afterwards on the 
 score of his blunt honesty. Veracity was not a common 
 virtue in those days, but Cardan laid claim to it with a 
 display of insistence which was not, perhaps, in the best 
 taste. Over and over again he writes that he never told 
 a lie ; l a contention which seems to have roused espe- 
 cially the bile of Naudd, and to have spurred him on 
 to make his somewhat clumsy assault on Cardan's 
 veracity. 2 His citation of the case of the stranger who 
 came with the volume of Apuleius for sale, and of the 
 miraculous gift of classic tongues, has already been 
 referred to ; but these may surely be attributed to an 
 exaggerated activity of that particular side of Cardan's 
 
 1 He writes in this strain in De Vita Propria, ch. xiv. p. 49, in De 
 Varietate Rerum, p. 626, and in Geniturarum Exempla, p. 431. 
 
 2 On the subject of dissimulation Cardan writes : " Assuevi 
 vultum in contrarium semper efformare; ideo simulare possum, 
 dissimulare nescio." De Vita Propria, ch. xiii. p. 42. Again in 
 Libellus Praceptorum ad filios (Opera, torn. i. p. 481), " Nolite 
 unquam mentiri, sed circumvenire [circumvenite ?]." 
 
JEROME CARDAN 265 
 
 imagination which was specially prone to seize upon 
 some figment of the brain, and some imperfectly ap- 
 prehended sensation of the optic nerve, and fashion from 
 these materials a tale of marvel. Delusions of this sort 
 were common in reputed witches, as Reginald Scot 
 writes "They learne strange toongs with small in- 
 dustrie (as Aristotle and others affirme)." 1 The other 
 charge preferred by Naud as to the pretended cure of 
 consumption, and the consequent quibbling and ter- 
 giversation, is a more valid one. It has been noted how 
 Cardan, previous to his journey to Scotland, had posed 
 as the discoverer of a cure for this malady. In the list 
 of his cures successfully treated he includes several in 
 which he restored patients suffering from blood-spitting, 
 fever, and extreme emaciation to sound health, the most 
 noteworthy of these being that of Girolamo Tiboldo, a 
 sea-captain. When the sick man had risen from his 
 bed and had become fat and healthy, Cardan deemed 
 that the occasion justified a certain amount of self- 
 gratulation, but the physicians, out of envy, de- 
 clared that Tiboldo had never suffered from true phthi- 
 sis. In his account of the case Cardan says that he, and 
 the physicians as well, were indeed untruthful over the 
 matter, his own falsehood having been the result of over- 
 sanguine hope, and theirs the outcome of spiteful envy. 
 Tiboldo died after all of chest disease, but not till 
 five years later, and then from a chill caught through 
 sitting in wet garments. 2 The term consumption has 
 always been applied somewhat loosely, and Cardan 
 probably would have been allowed the benefit of this 
 
 1 Discoverie of Witchcraft, ch. xi. 
 
 2 Donato Lanza, the druggist, who had been his first introducer 
 to Sfondrato, was equally perverse. After Cardan had cured him 
 of phthisis, he jumped out of a window to avoid arrest, and fell 
 into a fish-pond, and died of the cold he took. Opera, torn. i. p. 83, 
 
266 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 usage if he had not, in an excess of candour, set down 
 the workings of his mind and conscience with regard to 
 this matter. Writing of his treatment of Archbishop 
 Hamilton, he says : " And in truth I cured scarcely any 
 patients of phthisic disease, though I did find a remedy 
 for many who were suffering from similar maladies, 
 wherefore that boast of mine, that proclamation of merit 
 to which I had no right, worked no small profit to me, a 
 man very little given to lying. For the people about 
 the Archbishop, urged on by these and other considera- 
 tions, persuaded him that he had no chance of regaining 
 his health except by putting himself under my care, and 
 that he should fly to me as his last hope/' 1 It has 
 already been noted that Cardan's claim to some past 
 knowledge in the successful treatment of chest diseases 
 had weight with the Archbishop and Cassanate, and the 
 result of his visit surely proved that their confidence was 
 not ill-placed ; his boasting may have been a trifle ex- 
 cessive, but it was based on hope rather than achieve- 
 ment; and if proof can be adduced that it was not 
 prompted by any greed of illegitimate fame or profit, it 
 may justly be ranked as a weakness rather than as a 
 serious offence. To these two instances of falsehood 
 Naude adds a third, to wit, Cardan's claim to the 
 guidance of a familiar spirit. He refuses to let this rank 
 as a delusion ; and, urged no doubt by righteous in- 
 dignation against the ills springing from kindred super- 
 stitions, he writes down as a liar rather than a dupe the 
 man who, after mastering the whole world of science, 
 could profess such folly. 
 
 Considering the catholicity of Cardan's achievements, 
 and the eager spirit of inquiry he displayed in fields of 
 learning remote from his own particular one, it is worthy 
 1 Opera, torn. i. p. 136. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 267 
 
 of notice that he did not allow this discursive humour, 
 which is not seldom a token of instability, to hold him 
 back from pursuing the supreme aim of his life, that is, 
 eminence in the art of Medicine. In his youth the 
 threats and persuasions of his father could not induce 
 him to take up Jurisprudence with an assured income 
 and abandon Medicine. At Sacco, at Gallarate, and 
 afterwards in Milan he was forced by the necessity of 
 bread-winning to use his pen in all sorts of minor sub- 
 jects that had no real fascination for him, but all his 
 leisure was devoted to the acquisition of Medical know- 
 ledge. Prudence as well as inclination had a share in 
 directing his energies into this channel, for a report, for 
 which no doubt there was some warrant, was spread 
 abroad that what skill he had lay entirely in the know- 
 ledge of Astrology ; and, as this rumour operated 
 greatly to his prejudice, 1 he resolved to perfect himself 
 in Medicine and free his reputation from this aspersion. 
 He had quarrelled violently with the physicians over 
 the case of Count Borromeo's child which died, and with 
 Borromeo himself, and, almost immediately after this, 
 he published his book, De Astrorum Judiciis, a step which 
 tended to identify him yet more closely with Astrology, 
 and to raise a cry against him in Milan, which he declares 
 to be the most scandal-mongering city in the Universe. 
 But it is clear that in this instance scandal was not far 
 wrong, and that Cardan himself was right in purging him- 
 self of the quasi science he ought never to have taken up. 
 Medicine, when Cardan began his studies, was be- 
 ginning to feel the effects of the revival of Greek learning. 
 With the restored knowledge of the language of Greece 
 there arose a desire to investigate the storehouses of 
 science, as well as those of literature, and the extravagant 
 1 De Vita Propria, ch. x. p. 32, 
 
268 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 assumption of the dogmatists, and the eccentricities of 
 the Arabic school gave additional cogency to the cry 
 for more light. The sects which Galen had endeavoured 
 to unite sprang into new activity within a century after 
 his death. The Arabian physicians, acute and curious 
 as they were, had exercised but a very transient influence 
 upon the real progress of the art, the chief cause of 
 their non-success being their adhesion to arbitrary and 
 empirical tradition. At the end of the fifteenth century, 
 Leonicinus, a professor at Ferf ara, recalled the allegiance 
 of his pupils to the authority of Hippocrates by the 
 ability and eloquence of his teaching ; and, by his trans- 
 lation of Galen's works into Latin, he helped still farther 
 to confirm the ascendency of the fathers of Medicine. 
 The Arabians, sprung from the East, the storehouse of 
 drugs and simples, and skilled in Chemistry, were the 
 founders of the Pharmacopoeia, 1 but with this exception 
 they did nothing to advance Medicine beyond the point 
 where the Greeks had left it. The treatises of Haly, 
 Avicenna, and Maimonides were little better than faint 
 transcriptions of the writings of the great forerunners. 
 Their teaching was random and spasmodic, whereas the 
 system of Hippocrates was conceived in the spirit of 
 Greek philosophy, moving on by select experience, 
 always observant and cautious, and ascending by slow 
 and certain steps to the generalities of Theory. Indeed 
 the science of Medicine in the hands of Hippocrates and 
 his school seems, more than any other, to have presented 
 to the world a rudimentary essay, a faint foreshadowing 
 of the great fabric of inductive process, subsequently 
 formulated by the genius of Bacon. At various epochs 
 
 1 The Materia Medica of Mesua, dating from the eleventh century, 
 was used by the London College of Physicians in framing their 
 Pharmacopoeia in 1618. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 269 
 
 Medicine had been specially stimulated by the vivifying 
 spirit of Greek science ; in the Roman school in the days 
 of Celsus, and in the Arabian teaching likewise. Fuller 
 acknowledgment of the authority of Greek Medicine 
 came with the Renaissance, 1 but even this long step in 
 advance did not immediately liberate the art from 
 bondage. A new generation of professors arose who 
 added fresh material to the storehouses, already over- 
 flowing, of pedantic erudition, and showed the utmost 
 contempt for any fruit of other men's labour which might 
 not square exactly with the utterances of the founders. 
 This attitude rendered these professors of Medicine the 
 legitimate objects of ridicule, as soon as the leaven of 
 the revival began to work, and the darts of satire still 
 fly, now and then, at the same quarry. Paracelsus, dis- 
 figured as his teaching was by mysticism, the arts of the 
 charlatan, and by his ignorant repudiation of the service 
 of Anatomy, struck the first damaging blows at this 
 illegitimate ascendency, by the frequent success of his 
 empirical treatment, by the contempt he heaped upon 
 the scholastic authorities, and by the boldness with 
 which he assailed every thesis which they maintained. 
 Men of more sober intellect and weighty learning soon 
 followed in his track. Fernelius, one of the physicians 
 Cardan met in Paris, boldly rejected what he could 
 not approve by experience in the writings of Hippo- 
 crates and Galen, and stood forth as the advocate for 
 free inquiry, and Joubert of Montpelier, Argentier of 
 Turin, and Botal of Asti subsequently took a similar course. 
 When Cardan went to study at Pavia in 1519 this 
 tradition was unshaken. It was not until the advent of 
 Vesalius that the doom of the ancient system was 
 
 1 In 1443 a copy of Celsus was found at Milan ; Paulus ^Egineta 
 was discovered a little later. 
 
2 7 o JEROME CARDAN 
 
 sounded. Then, when Anatomy sprang to the front 
 as the potent ally of Medicine, the science of healing 
 entered upon a fresh stage, but this new force did not 
 make itself felt soon enough to seduce Cardan from the 
 altars of the ancients to the worship of new gods. As 
 long as he lived he was a follower of the great masters, 
 though at the same time his admiration of the teaching 
 of Vesalius was enthusiastic and profound. His love of 
 truth and sound learning forbade him to give unreflect- 
 ing adhesion to the precepts of any man, however emi- 
 nent, and when he found that Galen was a careless 
 commentator on Hippocrates, 1 and failed to elucidate 
 the difficulties with which he professed to deal, he did 
 not spare his censure. 2 In the De Subtilitate he speaks 
 of him as " Verbosus et studio contradicendi taedulus ut 
 alterum vix ferre queas, in reliquo gravis jactura artium 
 posita sit, quam nostrae aetatis viri restituere conati 
 sunt." 8 But as Galen's name is quoted as an authority 
 on almost every page of the Consilia Medica, it may be 
 assumed that Cardan's faith in his primary theories was 
 unshaken. In his Commentaries on Hippocrates, Galen 
 professes a profound respect for his master, but the two 
 great men must be regarded as the leaders of rival 
 schools ; indeed it could hardly be otherwise, seeing how 
 vast was the mass of knowledge which Galen added to 
 the art during his lifetime. 
 
 Hippocrates, by denying the supernatural origin of 
 disease, by his method of diagnosis, by the importance 
 he attached to air and diet, by his discriminating use of 
 drugs, and by the simplicity of his system generally, 
 
 1 Opera, torn. ix. p. i. 
 
 2 De Immortalitate Animorum (Lyons, 1545), p. 73. De Varietate, 
 p. 77- Opera, torn. i. p. 135. 
 
 3 De Subtilitate, p. 445. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 271 
 
 had placed Medicine on a rational basis. In the six 
 hundred years' space which elapsed before the appear- 
 ance of Galen, Medicine was broken up into many rival 
 schools. The Dogmatici and the Empirici for many 
 years wrangled undisturbed, but shortly after the 
 Christian era the Methodici entered the field, to be 
 followed later on by the Eclectici and a troop of other 
 sects, whose wranglings, and whose very names, are now 
 forgotten. In his History of Medicine, Dr. Bostock 
 gives a sketch of the attitude of Galen towards the rival 
 schools. " In his general principles he may be con- 
 sidered as belonging to the Dogmatic sect, for his 
 method was to reduce all his knowledge,, as acquired by 
 the observation of facts, to general theoretical principles. 
 These principles he indeed professed to deduce from 
 experience and observation, 1 and we have abundant 
 proofs of his diligence in collecting experience and his 
 accuracy in making observations ; but still, in a certain 
 sense at least, he regards individual facts and the details 
 of experience as of little value, unconnected with the 
 principles which he laid down as the basis of all medical 
 reasoning. In this fundamental point, therefore, the 
 method pursued by Galen appears to have been directly 
 the reverse of that which we now consider as the correct 
 method of scientific investigation ; and yet, such is the 
 force of actual genius, that in most instances he attained 
 the ultimate object in view, although by an indirect 
 path. He was an admirer of Hippocrates, and always 
 speaks of him with the most profound respect, pro- 
 fessing to act upon his principles, and to do little more 
 
 1 " Galen's great complaint against the Peripatetics or Aristo- 
 telians, was that while they discoursed about Anatomy they could 
 not dissect. He met an argument with a dissection or an experi- 
 ment. Come and see for yourselves, was his constant cry." 
 Harveian Oration^ Dr. J. F. Payne, 1896. 
 
272 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 than expound his doctrines and support them by new 
 facts and observations. Yet in reality we have few 
 writers whose works, both as to substance and manner, 
 are more different from each other than those of Hippo- 
 crates and Galen, the simplicity of the former being 
 strongly contrasted with the abstruseness and refinement 
 of the latter/' 
 
 The antagonism between these two great men was 
 not perhaps more marked than might have been ex- 
 pected, considering that an interval of six hundred years 
 lay between them. However loyal he may have been 
 to his master, Galen, with his keen, catholic, and subtle 
 intellect, was bound to fall under the sway of Alex- 
 andrian influence while he studied in Alexandria as the 
 pupil of Heraclianus. The methods of the contemporary 
 school of philosophy fascinated him; and, in his en- 
 deavour to bring Medicine out of the chaotic welter in 
 which he found it, he attempted unhappily for the 
 future of science to use the hyper-idealistic Platonism 
 then dominant in Alexandria, rather than the gradual 
 and orderly induction of Hippocrates, as a bond of union 
 between professional and scientific medicine ; a false 
 step for which not even his great services to anatomy 
 and physiology can altogether atone. Yet most likely 
 it was this same error, an error which practically led to 
 the enslavement of Medicine till the seventeenth century, 
 which caused Cardan to regard him, and not Hippocrates, 
 as his master. The vastness and catholicity of Galen's 
 scheme of Medicine must have been peculiarly attractive 
 to a man of Cardan's temper ; and that Galen attempted 
 to reconcile the incongruous in the teleological system 
 which he devised, would not have been rated as a fault 
 by his Milanese disciple. 
 
 Galen taught as a cardinal truth the doctrine of the 
 
JEROME CARDAN 273 
 
 Hippocratic elements, heat, cold, moisture, and dryness, 
 and a glance at the Consilium which Cardan wrote out 
 on Archbishop Hamilton's illness, will show how com- 
 pletely he was under the sway of this same teaching. 
 The genius of Hippocrates was perhaps too sober and 
 orderly to win his entire sympathy ; the encyclopaedic 
 knowledge, the literary grace, and the more daring 
 flights of Galen's intellect attracted him much more 
 strongly. Hippocrates scoffed at charms and amulets, 
 while Galen commended them, and is said to have 
 invented the anodyne necklace which was long known 
 and worn in England. There is no need to specify 
 which of the masters Cardan would swear by in this 
 matter. The choice which Cardan made, albeit it was 
 exactly what might have been anticipated, was in every 
 respect an unfortunate one. He put himself under a 
 master whose teaching could have no other effect than 
 to accentuate the failings of the pupil, whereas had he 
 let his mind come under the more regular discipline of 
 Hippocrates' method, it is almost certain that the mass 
 of his work, now shut in dusty folios which stand un- 
 disturbed on the shelves for decade after decade, would 
 have been immeasurably more fruitful of good. With 
 all his industry in collecting, and his care in verifying, 
 his medical work remains a heap of material, and no- 
 thing more valuable. Learning and science would have 
 profited much had he put himself under the standard of 
 the Father of Medicine, and still more if fate had sent 
 him into being at some period after the world of letters 
 had learned to realize the capabilities of the inductive 
 system of Philosophy. 
 
 It may readily be conceded that Cardan during his 
 career turned to good account the medical knowledge 
 which he had gathered from the best attainable sources, 
 
274 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 and that he was on the whole the most skilful physician 
 of his age. He likewise foreshadowed the system of 
 deaf mute instruction. A certain Georgius Agricola, a 
 physician of Heidelberg who died in 1485, makes mention 
 of a deaf mute who had learnt to read and write, but 
 this statement was received with incredulity. Cardan, 
 taking a more philosophic view, declared that people 
 thus afflicted might easily be taught to hear by read- 
 ing, and to speak by writing; writing was associated 
 with speech, and speech with thought, but written char- 
 acters and ideas might be connected without the inter- 
 vention of sounds. 1 This view, put forward with all the 
 authority of Cardan's name, would certainly rouse fresh 
 interest in the question, and, whether stimulated by his 
 words or not, an attempt to teach deaf mutes was made 
 by Pedro de Ponce, a Spanish Dominican, about 1560. 
 But it would not be permissible to claim for Cardan any 
 share in the epoch-making discoveries in Medicine. 
 Galen as an experimental physiologist had brought 
 diagnosis to a level unattained before. His methods 
 had been abandoned by his successors, and practice had 
 in consequence suffered deterioration, but Cardan, study- 
 ing under the revived Galenism, called into life by 
 the teaching of Vesalius, went to deal with his cures 
 under conditions more favourable than those offered by 
 any previous period of the world's history. His cure of 
 Archbishop Hamilton's asthma, over which Cassanate 
 and the other doctors had failed, was due to a more 
 careful diagnosis and a more judicious application of 
 existing rules, rather than to the working of any new 
 discoveries of his own. Viewed as a soldier in the service 
 of Hygeia, how transient and slender is the fame of 
 Cardan compared with that of Linacre, Vesalius, or 
 1 Opera^ torn. x. p. 462. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 275 
 
 Harvey! Were his claims to immortality to rest en- 
 tirely on his contribution to Medicine, his name would 
 have gone down to oblivion along with that of Cavenago, 
 Camutio, Delia Croce, and the multitude of jealous 
 rivals who, according to his account, were ever plotting 
 his downfall. But it was rescued from this fate by his 
 excellence as a mathematician, by the interest clinging 
 to his personality, by the enormous range of his learning, 
 by his picturesque reputation as a dreamer of dreams, 
 and a searcher into the secrets of the hidden world. 
 In an age when books were few and ill-composed, his 
 works became widely popular ; because, although he 
 dealt with abstruse subjects, he wrote as even Naude 
 admits in a passably good style, and handled his sub- 
 ject with a lightness of touch which was then very rare. 
 This was the reason why men went on reading him 
 long after his works had ceased to have any scientific 
 value ; which induced writers like Burton and Sir 
 Thomas Browne to embroider their pages freely with 
 quotations from his works, and thus make his name 
 familiar to many who have never handled a single one 
 of his volumes. 
 
 It is somewhat strange to find running through the 
 complex web of Cardan's character a well-defined thread 
 of worldly wisdom and common-sense ; to find that a man, 
 described by almost every one who has dealt with his 
 character as a credulous simpleton, one with disordered 
 wits, or a down-right madman, should, when occasion 
 demanded, prove himself to be a sharp man of business. 
 When Fazio died he left his son with a number of un- 
 settled law-suits on hand, concerning which he writes : 
 " From my father's death until I was forty-six, that is 
 to say for a space of twenty-three years, I was almost 
 continually involved in law-suits. First with Alessandro 
 
276 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 Castillione, surnamed Gatico, with respect to certain 
 plantations, and afterwards with his kinsfolk. Next 
 with the Counts of Barbiani, next with the college, next 
 with the heirs of Dominico de Tortis, who had held me 
 in his arms when I was baptized. Out of all these suits 
 I came victorious. It was indeed a matter for surprise 
 that I should have got the better of Alessandro Castil- 
 lione, seeing that his uncle sat as judge. Moreover, he 
 had already got a decision against me, a decision which, 
 as the jurisconsults declared, helped my case as the trial 
 went on, and I was able to force him to pay me all the 
 money which was in dispute. A like good fortune at- 
 tended me while my claims were considered by the 
 heads of the Milanese College, and finally rejected by 
 several votes. Then afterwards, when they had decided 
 to admit me, and when they tried to subject me to 
 certain rules which placed me on a footing inferior to 
 their own, I compelled them to grant me full member- 
 ship. In the case of the Barbiani, after long litigation 
 and many angry words and much trouble, I came to 
 terms with them ; and, having received the sum of 
 money covenanted by agreement, I was entirely freed 
 from vexation of the law." l Writing generally of his 
 monetary dealings, Cardan says : " Whenever I may 
 have incurred a loss, I have never been content merely 
 to retrieve the same, I have always contrived to seize 
 upon something extra." 2 Or again : " If at any time I 
 have lost twenty crowns, I have never rested until I 
 have succeeded in getting back these and twenty more 
 in addition." 3 
 
 Cardan left in his Dicta Familiaria and Prcecep- 
 
 1 De Vita Propria, ch. xxviii. p. 73. 2 Ibid., ch. xxiii. p. 64. 
 
 3 De Utilitate, p. 309. He also writes at length in the Proxenata 
 on Domestic Economy. Chapter xxxvii. et seq. Opera, torn. i. p 
 377- 
 
JEROME CARDAN 277 
 
 torum ad filios Libellus a long list of aphorisms and 
 counsels, many of which give evidence of keen in- 
 sight and busy observation of mankind, while some are 
 distinguished by a touch of humour rare in his other 
 writings. He bids his children to be careful how they 
 offend princes, and, offence being given, never to flatter 
 themselves that it has been pardoned ; to live joyfully 
 as long as they can, for men are for the most part worn 
 out by care ; never to take a wife from a witless stock 
 or one tainted with hereditary disease ; to refrain from 
 deliberating when the mind is disturbed ; to learn how 
 to be worsted and suffer loss ; and to trust a school- 
 master to teach children, but not to feed them. One of 
 the dicta is a gem of quaint wisdom. " Before you begin 
 to wash your face, see that you have a towel handy to 
 dry the same." If all the instances of prodigies, por- 
 tents, visions, and mysterious warnings which Cardan 
 has left on record were set down in order, a perusal of 
 this catalogue would justify, if it did not compel, the 
 belief that he was little better than a credulous fool, and 
 raise doubts whether such a man could have written 
 such orderly and coherent works as the treatise on 
 Arithmetic, or the book of the Great Art. But Cardan 
 was beyond all else a man of moods, and it would be 
 unfair to figure as his normal mental condition those 
 periods of overwrought nervousness and the hallucina- 
 tions they brought with them. In his old age the 
 nearness of the inevitable stroke, and the severance of 
 all earthly ties, led him to discipline his mind into a 
 calmer mood, but early and late during his season of 
 work his nature was singularly sensitive to the wearing 
 assaults of cares and calamities. In crises of this kind 
 his mind would be brought into so morbid a condition, 
 that it would fall entirely under the sway of any single 
 
278 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 idea then dominant; such idea would master him en- 
 tirely, or even haunt him like one of those unclean 
 spectres he describes with such gusto in the De Varietate. 
 What he may have uttered when these moods were upon 
 him must not be taken seriously ; these are the moments 
 to which the major part of his experiences of things 
 supra naturam may be referred. But there are numerous 
 instances in which he describes marvellous phenomena 
 with philosophic calm, and examines them in the true 
 spirit of scepticism. In his account of the trembling of 
 the bed on which he lay the night before he heard of 
 Gian Battista's marriage, he goes on to say that a few 
 nights after the first manifestation, he was once more 
 conscious of a strange movement ; and, having put his 
 hand to his breast, found that his heart was palpitat- 
 ing violently because he had been lying on his left side. 
 Then he remembered that a similar physical trouble had 
 accompanied the first trembling of the bed, and admits 
 that this manifestation may be referred to a natural 
 cause, i. e. the palpitation. He tells also how he found 
 amongst his father's papers a record of a cure of the 
 gout by a prayer offered to the Virgin at eight in the 
 morning on the first of April, and how he duly put up 
 the prayer and was cured of the gout, but he adds : 
 " Sed in hoc, auxiliis etiam artis usus sum." 1 Again with 
 regard to the episode of the ignition of his bed twice in 
 the same night, without visible cause, he says that this 
 portent may have come about by some supernatural 
 working ; but that, on the other hand, it may have been 
 the result of mere chance. He tells another story of an 
 experience which befell him when he was in Belgium. 2 
 He was aroused early in the morning by the noise made 
 outside his door by a dog catching fleas. Having got 
 1 De Vita Propriety ch. xxxvii. p. 118. 2 De Varietate, p. 589, 
 
JEROME CARDAN 279 
 
 out of bed to see to this, he heard the sound as of a key 
 being softly put into the lock. He told this fact to the 
 servants, who at once took up the tale, and persuaded 
 themselves that they had heard many noises of the same 
 kind, and others vastly more wonderful ; in short, the 
 whole house was swarming with apparitions. The next 
 night the noise was repeated, and a second observation 
 laid bare the real cause thereof. The scratching of the 
 dog had caused the bolt to fall into the socket, and this 
 produced the noise which had disquieted him. He 
 writes in conclusion : " Thus many events which seem 
 to defy all explanation have really come to pass by 
 accident, or in the course of nature. Out of such mani- 
 festations as these the unlettered, the superstitious, the 
 timorous, and the over-hasty make for themselves 
 miracles." 1 Again, after telling a strange story of a 
 boy who beheld the image of a thief in the neck of a 
 phial, and of some incantations of Josephus Niger, he 
 concludes : " Nevertheless I am of opinion that all these 
 things were fables, and that no one could have had any 
 real knowledge thereof, seeing that they were nothing 
 else than vain triflings." 2 
 
 In a nature so complex and many-sided as Cardan's, 
 strange resemblances may be sought for and discovered, 
 and it certainly is an unexpected revelation to find a 
 mental attitude common to Cardan, a man tied and 
 bound by authority and the traditions of antiquity, and 
 such a daring assailant of the schools and of Aristotle as 
 Doctor Joseph Glanvil. The conclusions of Cardan as 
 to certain obscure phenomena recently cited show that, 
 in matters lying beyond sensual cognition, he kept an 
 open mind. In summing up the case of the woman said 
 to have been cured by the incantations of Josephus 
 1 De Varietate, p. 589. 2 Ibid.) p. 640. 
 
2 8o JEROME CARDAN 
 
 Niger, he says that she must have been cured either by 
 the power of the imagination, or by the agency of the 
 demons. Here he anticipates the arguments which 
 Glanvil sets forth in Sadducismus Triumphatus. Writ- 
 ing on the belief in witchcraft Glanvil says, " We have 
 the attestation of thousands of eye and ear witnesses, 
 and these not of the easily-deceivable vulgar only, but 
 of wise and grave discerners ; and that when no interest 
 could oblige them to agree together in a common Lye. 
 I say, we have the light of all these circumstances to 
 confirm us in the belief of things done by persons of 
 despicable power and knowledge, beyond the reach of 
 Art and ordinary Nature. Standing public Records 
 have been kept of these well-attested Relations, and 
 Epochas made of those unwonted events. Laws in 
 many Nations have been enacted against those vile 
 practices ; those amongst the Jews and our own are 
 notorious ; such cases have often been determined near 
 us by wise and reverend Judges, upon clear and 
 convictive Evidence ; and thousands of our own Nation 
 have suffered death for their vile compacts with Apos- 
 tate spirits. All these I might largely prove in their 
 particular instances, but that 'tis not needful since these 
 did deny the being of Witches, so it was not out of 
 ignorance of these heads of Argument, of which 
 probably they have heard a thousand times ; but from 
 an apprehension that such a belief is absurd, and the 
 things impossible. And upon these presumptions they 
 condemn all demonstrations of this nature, and are 
 hardened against conviction. And I think those that 
 can believe all Histories and Romances; That all the 
 wiser would have agreed together to juggle mankind 
 into a common belief of ungrounded fables, that the 
 sound senses of multitudes together may deceive them, 
 
JEROME CARDAN 281 
 
 and Laws are built upon Chimeras ; That the greatest 
 and wisest Judges have been Murderers, and the sagest 
 persons Fools, or designing Impostors; I say those 
 that can believe this heap of absurdities, are either 
 more credulous than those whose credulity they repre- 
 hend ; or else have some extraordinary evidence of their 
 perswasion, viz. : That it is absurd and impossible that 
 there should be a Witch or Apparition." l Cardan's argu- 
 ment in the case of the sick woman, that it would be diffi- 
 cult if not impossible to invent cause for her cure, other 
 than the power of imagination or Demoniac agency, if 
 less emphatic and lengthy than Glanvil's, certainly runs 
 upon parallel lines therewith, and suggests, if it does not 
 proclaim, the existence of such a thing as the credulity 
 of unbelief ; in other words that those who were disposed 
 to brush aside the alternative causes of the cure as set 
 down by him, and search for others, and put faith in 
 them, would be fully as credulous as those who held the 
 belief which he recorded as his own. 
 
 1 Sadducismus Triumphatus (Ed. 1682), p. 4. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 WHEN dealing with Cardan's sudden incarceration in 
 1570, in the chronicle of his life, it was assumed that his 
 offence must have been some spoken or written words 
 upon which a charge of impiety might have been 
 fastened. Leaving out of consideration the fiery zeal of 
 the reigning Pope Pius V., it is hard to determine what 
 plea could have been found for a serious charge of this 
 nature. Cardan's work had indeed passed the ecclesi- 
 astical censors in 1562 ; but in the estimation of Pius V. 
 the smallest lapse from the letter of orthodoxy would 
 have seemed grave enough to send to prison, and 
 perhaps to death, a man as deeply penetrated with the 
 spirit of religion as Cardan assuredly was. One of his 
 chief reasons for refusing the King of Denmark's 
 generous offer was the necessity involved of having to 
 live amongst a people hostile to the Catholic religion ; 
 and, in writing of his visit to the English Court, he 
 declares that he was unwilling to recognize the title 
 of King Edward VI., inasmuch as by so doing he might 
 seem to prejudice the rights of the Pope. 1 In spite of 
 this positive testimony, and the absence of any utter- 
 ances of manifest heresy, divers writers in the succeeding 
 century classed him with the unbelievers. Dr. Samuel 
 Parker in his Tractatus de Deo, published in 1678, 
 
 1 De Vita Propria^ ch. xxix. p. 76. 
 282 
 
JEROME CARDAN 283 
 
 includes him amongst the atheistical philosophers ; but 
 a perusal of the Doctor's remarks leaves the reader 
 unconvinced as to the justice of such a charge. The 
 term Atheism, however, was at this time used in the 
 very loosest sense, and was even applied to disbelievers 
 in the apostolical succession. 1 Dr. Parker writes, 
 " Another cause which acted, together with the natural 
 disposition of Cardan, to produce that odd mixture of 
 folly and wisdom in him, was his habit of continual 
 thinking by which the bile was absorbed and burnt up ; 
 he suffered neither eating, pleasure, nor pain to interrupt 
 the course of his thoughts. He was well acquainted 
 with the writings of all the ancients nor did he just 
 skim over the heads and contents of books as some do 
 who ought not to be called learned men, but skilful 
 bookmongers. Every author that Cardan read (and he 
 read nearly all) he became intimately acquainted with, 
 so that if any one disputing with him, quoted the 
 authority of the ancients, and made any the least slip or 
 mistake, he would instantly set them right." Dr. Parker 
 is as greatly amazed at the mass of work he produced, 
 as at his powers of accumulation, and maintains that 
 Cardan believed he was endowed with a faculty which 
 he calls repr&sentatio, through which he was able to 
 apprehend things without study, "by means of an 
 interior light shining within him. From which you may 
 learn the fact that he had studied with such enduring 
 obstinacy that he began to persuade himself that the 
 visions which appeared before him in these fits and 
 transports of the mind, were the genuine inspirations of 
 the Deity." This is evidently Dr. Parker's explanation 
 of the attendant demon, and he ends by declaring 
 that Cardan was rather fanatic than infidel. 
 1 Dugald Stewart, Dissertations, p. 378. 
 
284 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 Mention has been made of the list of his vices and 
 imperfections which Cardan wrote down with his own 
 hand. Out of such a heap of self-accusation it would 
 have been an easy task for some meddlesome enemy to 
 gather up a plentiful selection of isolated facts which by 
 artful combination might be so arranged as to justify 
 a formal charge of impiety. The most definite of these 
 charges were made by Martin del Rio, 1 who declares 
 that Cardan once wrote a book on the Mortality of the 
 Soul which he was wont to exhibit to his intimate 
 friends. He did not think it prudent to print this work, 
 but wrote another, taking a more orthodox view, called 
 De Immortalitate Animorum. Another assailant, Theo- 
 phile Raynaud, asserts that certain passages in this book 
 suggest, if they do not prove, that Cardan did not set 
 down his real opinions on the subject in hand. Raynaud 
 ends by forbidding the faithful to read any of Cardan's 
 books, and describes him as " Homo nullius religionis ac 
 fidei, et inter clancularios atheos secundi ordinis aevo 
 suo facile princeps." Of all Cardan's books the De Im- 
 mortalitate Animorum is the one in which materials for 
 a charge of impiety might most easily be found. It was 
 put together at a time when he had had very little 
 practice in the Greek tongue, and it is possible that many 
 of his conclusions may be drawn from premises only 
 imperfectly apprehended. Scaliger in his Exercitations 
 seizes upon one passage 2 which, according to his ren- 
 
 1 The writer, a Jesuit, says in Disquisitionum Magicarum (Lou- 
 vanii, 1 599), torn. i. : " In Cardani de Subtilitate et de Varietate libris 
 passim latet anguis in herba et indiget expurgatione Ecclesiastics 
 limae." Del Rio was a violent assailant of Cornelius Agrippa. 
 
 " Quoniam intellectus intrinsecus est homini, belluis extrinsecus 
 collucet: unus etiam satisfacere omnibus, quae in una specie sunt 
 potest, hominibus plures sunt necessarii : tertia est quod hominis ani- 
 ma tanquam speculum est levigata, splendida, solida, clara : belluarum 
 autem tenebrosa nee levis ; atque ideo in nostra anima lux mentis 
 
JEROME CARDAN 285 
 
 dering, implied that Cardan reckoned the intelligence 
 of men and beasts to be the same in essence, the variety 
 of operation being produced by the fact that the appre- 
 hensive faculty was inherent in the one, and only opera- 
 tive upon the other from without. But all through this 
 book it is very difficult to determine whether the pro- 
 positions advanced are Cardan's own, or those of the 
 Greek and Arabian writers he quotes so freely : and 
 this charge of Scaliger, which is the best supported of all, 
 goes very little way to convict him of impiety. In the 
 De Vita Propria there are several passages l which sug- 
 gest a belief akin to that of the Anima Mundi ; he 
 had without doubt made up his mind that this work 
 should not see the light till he was beyond the reach of 
 Pope or Council. The origin of this charge of impiety 
 may be referred with the best show of probability to 
 his attempt to cast the horoscope of Jesus Christ. 2 
 This, together with a diagram, is given in the Com- 
 mentaries on Ptolemy, and soon after it appeared it was 
 made the occasion of a fierce attack by Julius Caesar 
 Scaliger, who declared that such a scheme must be flat 
 blasphemy, inasmuch as the author proved that all the 
 actions of Christ necessarily followed the position of the 
 stars at the time of His nativity. If Scaliger had taken 
 the trouble to glance at the Commentary he would have 
 discovered that Cardan especially guarded himself 
 against any accusation of this sort, by setting down 
 
 refulget multipliciter confracta, inde ipse Intellectus intelligit. 
 Ceteris autem potentiis, ut diximus, nulliis limes prescriptus est : 
 at belluarum internis facultatibus tantum licet agnoscere, quantum 
 per exteriores sensus accesserit.'' De Imm. Anim., p. 283. 
 
 1 " Deum debere dici immensum : omnia quae partes habent di- 
 versas ordinatas animam habere et vitam." p. 167. 
 
 2 In the last edition of De Libris Propriis he calls it " Christique 
 nativitas admirabilis." Opera, torn. i. p. no. 
 
286 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 that no one was to believe he had any intention of 
 asserting that Christ's divinity, or His miracles, or His 
 holy life, or the promulgation of His laws were in any 
 way influenced by the stars. 1 Naude, in recording the 
 censures of De Thou, "Verum extremae amentiae fuit, 
 imo impiae audacise, astrorum commentitiis legibus 
 verum astrorum dominum velle subjicere. Quod ille 
 tamen exarata Servatoris nostri genitura fecit," and of 
 Joseph Scaliger, " impiam dicam magis, an 'jocularem 
 audaciam quse et dominum stellarum stellis subjecerit, 
 et natum eo tempore putarit, quod adhuc in lite positum 
 est, ut vanitas cum impietate certaret," 2 declares that it 
 was chiefly from the publication of this horoscope that 
 Cardan incurred the suspicion of blasphemy ; but, with 
 his free-thinking bias, abstains from adding his own 
 censure. He rates Scaliger for ignorance because he 
 was evidently under the impression that Cardan was the 
 first to draw a horoscope of Christ, and attacks Cardan 
 chiefly on the score of plagiary. He records how divers 
 writers in past times had done the same thing. Albu- 
 masar, one of the most learned of the Arabs, whose 
 thema natalium is quoted by Roger Bacon in one of his 
 epistles to Clement V., Albertus Magnus, Peter d'Ailly 
 the Cardinal of Cambrai, and Tiberius Russilanus who 
 lived in the time of Leo X., all constructed nativities 
 of Christ, but Cardan makes no mention of these 
 horoscopists, and, according to the view of Naude, 
 poses as the inventor of this form of impiety, and is 
 consequently guilty of literary dishonesty, a worse sin, in 
 his critics' eyes, than the framing of the horoscope itself. 
 That there was in Cardan's practice enough of 
 curiosity and independence to provoke suspicion of his 
 
 1 Ptolemai de Astrorum Judiciis, p. 163. 
 
 2 Prcefatio in Manilium. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 287 
 
 orthodoxy in the minds of the leaders of the post- 
 Tridentine revival, is abundantly possible ; but there 
 is nothing in all his life and works to show that he was, 
 according to the standard of every age, anything else 
 than a spiritually-minded man. 1 It would be hard to 
 find words more instinct with the true feeling of piety, 
 than the following taken from the fifty-third chapter of 
 the De VitaPropria, " I love solitude, for I never seem 
 to be so entirely with those who are especially dear to 
 me as when I am alone. I love God and the spirit of 
 good, and when I am by myself I let my thoughts dwell 
 on these, their immeasurable beneficence; the eternal 
 wisdom, the source and origin of clearest light, that 
 true joy within us which never fears that God will for- 
 sake us ; that groundwork of truth ; that willing love ; 
 and the Maker of us all, who is blessed in Himself, and 
 likewise the desire and safeguard of all the blessed. 
 Ah, what depth and what height of righteousness, mind- 
 ful of the dead and not forgetting the living. He is the 
 Spirit who protects me by His commands, my good 
 and merciful counsellor, my helper and consoler in 
 misfortune." 
 
 Two or three of Cardan's treatises are in the materna 
 lingua, but he wrote almost entirely in Latin, using a 
 style which was emphatically literary. 2 His Latin is 
 probably above the average excellence of the age, and 
 if the classic writers held the first place in his estimation 
 as naturally they would he assuredly did not neglect 
 the firstfruits of modern literature. Pulci was his 
 favourite poet. He evidently knew Dante and Boc- 
 
 1 A proof of his liberal tone of mind is found in his appreciation 
 of the fine qualities of Edward VI. as a man, although he resented 
 his encroachments as a king upon the Pope's rights. 
 
 2 In the De Vita Propria, ch. xxxiii. p. 106, he fixes into his prose 
 an entire line of Horace, " Canidia afflasset pejor serpentibus Afris." 
 
288 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 caccio well, and his literary insight was clear enough to 
 perceive that the future belonged to those who should 
 write in the vulgar tongue of the lands which produced 
 them. 1 
 
 Perhaps it was impossible that a man endowed with 
 so catholic a spirit and with such earnest desire for 
 knowledge, should sink into the mere pedant with 
 whom later ages have been made acquainted through 
 the farther specialization of science. At all events 
 Cardan is an instance that the man of liberal education 
 need not be killed by the man of science. For him the 
 path of learning was not an easy one to tread, and, as it 
 not seldom happens, opposition and coldness drove him 
 on at a pace rarely attained by those for whom the 
 royal road to learning is smoothed and prepared. For 
 a long time his father refused to give him instruction in 
 Latin, or to let him be taught by any one else, and up to his 
 twentieth year he seems to have known next to nothing 
 of this language which held the keys both of letters and 
 science. He began to learn Greek when he was about 
 thirty-five, but it was not till he had turned forty that 
 he took up the study of it in real earnest ; 2 and, writing 
 some years later, he gives quotations from a Latin 
 version of Aristotle. 3 In his commentaries on Hip- 
 pocrates he used a Latin text, presumably the transla- 
 tion of Calvus printed in Rome in 1525, and quotes 
 Epicurus in Latin in the De Subtilitate (p. 347), but in 
 works like the De Sapientia and the De Consolatione he 
 quotes Greek freely, supplying in nearly every case a 
 Latin version of the passages cited. These treatises 
 
 1 "At Boccatii fabulas mine majus virent quam antea : et Dantis 
 Petrarchaeque ac Virgilii totque aliorum poemata sunt in maxima 
 veneratione." Opera, torn. i. p. 125. 
 
 2 Ibid., torn. i. p. 59. 3 De Vita Propria, ch. xii. xiii. pp. 39, 44. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 289 
 
 bristle with quotations, Horace being his favourite author. 
 " Vir in omni sapientiae genere admirandus." l As with 
 many moderns his love for Horace did not grow less as 
 old age crept on, for the De Vita Propria is perhaps 
 fuller of Horatian tags than any other of his works. 
 It would seem somewhat of a paradox that a sombre 
 and earnest nature like Cardan's should find so great 
 pleasure in reading the elegant poco curante triflings of 
 the Augustan singer, were it not a recognized fact that 
 Horace has always been a greater favourite with serious 
 practical Englishmen than with the descendants of those 
 for whom he wrote his verses. 
 
 It was a habit with Cardan to apologize in the 
 prefaces of his scientific works for the want of elegance 
 in his Latin, explaining that the baldness and simplicity 
 of his periods arose from his determination to make his 
 meaning plain, and to trouble nothing about style for 
 the time being ; but the following passage shows that he 
 had a just and adequate conception of the necessary 
 laws of literary art. " That book is perfect which goes 
 straight to its point in one single line of argument, 
 which neither leaves out aught that is necessary, nor 
 brings in aught that is superfluous : which observes 
 the rule of correct division ; which explains what is 
 obscure ; and shows plainly the groundwork upon which 
 it is based." 2 
 
 The De Vita Propria from which this extract comes 
 is in point of style one of his weakest books, but even in 
 this volume passages may here and there be found of 
 considerable merit, and Cardan was evidently studious 
 to let his ideas be presented in intelligible form, for 
 he records that in 1535 he read through the whole 
 
 1 Opera^ torn. i. p. 505. 2 De Vita Propria, ch. xxvii. p. 72. 
 
 U 
 
29 o JEROME CARDAN 
 
 of Cicero, for the sake of improving his Latin. His 
 style, according to Naude, held a middle place be- 
 tween the high-flown and the pedestrian, and of all his 
 books the De Utilitate ex Adversis Capienda, which was 
 begun in 1557, shows the nearest approach to elegance, 
 but even this is not free from diffuseness, the fault which 
 Naude finds in all his writings. Long dissertations 
 entirely alien from the subject in hand are constantly 
 interpolated. In the Practice of Arithmetic he turns 
 aside to treat of the marvellous properties of certain 
 numbers, of the motion of the planets, and of the Tower 
 of Babel ; and in the treatise on Dialectic he gives an 
 estimate of the historians and letter-writers of the past. 
 But here Cardan did not sin in ignorance ; his poverty 
 and not his will consented to these literary outrages. He 
 was paid for his work by the sheet, and the thicker the 
 volume the higher the pay. 1 
 
 When he made a beginning of the De Utilitate Cardan 
 was at the zenith of his fortunes. He had lately 
 returned from his journey to Scotland, having made 
 a triumphant progress through the cities of Western 
 Europe. Thus, with his mind well stored with experi- 
 ence of divers lands, his wits sharpened by intercourse 
 with the tlite of the learned world, and his hand nerved 
 by the magnetic stimulant of success, he sat down to 
 write as the philosopher and man of the world, rather 
 than as the man of science. He was, in spite of his 
 prosperity, inclined to deal with the more sombre side of 
 life. He seems to have been specially drawn to write of 
 
 1 " Eo tantum fine, quemadmodum alicubi fatetur, ut plura folia 
 Typographis mitteret, quibuscum antea de illorum pretio pepigerat ; 
 atque hoc modo fami, non secus ac famae scriberet." Naudaeus, 
 Judicium. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 291 
 
 death, disease, and of the peculiar physical misfortune 
 which befell him in early manhood. Like Cicero he 
 goes on to treat of Old Age, but in a spirit so widely 
 different that a brief comparison of the conclusions of 
 the two philosophers will not be without interest. Old 
 age, Cardan declares to be the most cruel and irrepar- 
 able evil with which man is cursed, and to talk of old 
 age is to talk of the crowning misfortune of humanity. 
 Old men are made wretched by avarice, by dejection, 
 and by terror. He bids men not to be deceived by the 
 flowery words of Cicero, 1 when he describes Cato as an 
 old man, like to a fair statue of Polycleitus, with facul- 
 ties unimpaired and memory fresh and green. He next 
 goes on to catalogue the numerous vices and deformities 
 of old age, and instances from Aristotle what he 
 considers to be the worst of all its misfortunes, to wit 
 that an old man is well-nigh cut off from hope ; and by 
 way of comment grimly adds, " If any man be plagued by 
 the ills of old age he should blame no one but himself, 
 for it is by his own choice that his life has run on so 
 long." He vouchsafes a few words of counsel as to 
 how this hateful season may be robbed of some of its 
 horror. Our bodies grow old first, then our senses, then 
 our minds. Therefore let us store our treasures in that 
 part of us which will hold out longest, as men in a 
 beleaguered city are wont to collect their resources in the 
 citadel, which, albeit it must in the end be taken, will 
 nevertheless be the last to fall into the foeman's hands. 
 Old men should avoid society, seeing that they can 
 bring nothing thereto worth having : whether they speak 
 
 1 In De Consolatione (Opera, torn. i. p. 604) he writes : 
 " Quantum diligentiae, quantum industries Cicero adjecit, quo 
 conatu nixus est ut persuaderet senectutem esse tolerandam." 
 
292 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 or keep silent they are in the way, and they are as 
 irksome to themselves when they are silent, as they are 
 to others when they speak. The old man should take a 
 lesson from the lower animals, which are wont to defend 
 themselves with the best arms given them by nature : 
 bulls with their horns, horses with their hoofs, and cats 
 with their claws ; wherefore an old man should at least 
 show himself to be as wise as the brutes and maintain 
 his position by his wisdom and knowledge, seeing that 
 all the grace and power of his manhood must needs have 
 fled. 1 
 
 In another of his moral treatises he has formulated a 
 long indictment against old age, that hateful state with 
 its savourless joys and sleepless nights. Did not Zeno 
 the philosopher strangle himself when he found that 
 time refused to do its work. The happiest are those 
 who earliest lay down the burden of existence, and the 
 Law itself causes these offenders who are least guilty 
 to die first, letting the more nefarious and hardened 
 criminals stand by and witness the death of their 
 fellows. There can be no evil worse than the daily 
 expectation of the blow that is inevitable, and old age, 
 when it comes, must make every man regret that he did 
 not die in infancy. " When I was a boy," he writes, " I 
 remember one day to have heard my mother, Chiara 
 Micheria herself a young woman cry out that she 
 wished it had been God's will to let her die when she 
 was a child. I asked her why, and she answered : 
 ' Because I know I must soon die, to the great peril of 
 my soul, and besides this, if we shall diligently weigh 
 and examine all our experiences of life, we shall not 
 light upon a single one which will not have brought us 
 1 De Utilitate, book ii. ch. 4. 
 
JEROME CARDAN 293 
 
 more sorrow than joy. For afflictions when they come 
 mar the recollection of our pleasures, and with just 
 cause ; for what is there in life worthy the name of 
 delight, the ever-present burden of existence, the task of 
 dressing and undressing every day, hunger, thirst, evil 
 dreams ? What more profit and ease have we than 
 the dead ? We must endure the heat of summer, the 
 cold of winter, the confusion of the times, the dread of 
 war, the stern rule of parents, the anxious care of our 
 children, the weariness of domestic life, the ill carriage 
 of servants, lawsuits, and, what is worst of all, the state of 
 the public mind which holds probity as silliness ; which 
 practises deceit and calls it prudence. Craftsmen are 
 counted excellent, not by their skill in their art, but by 
 reason of their garish work and of the valueless appro- 
 bation of the mob. Wherefore one must needs either 
 incur God's displeasure or live in misery, despised and 
 persecuted by men.' " l These words, though put into 
 his mother's mouth, are manifestly an expression of 
 Cardan's own feelings. 
 
 Cardan was the product of an age to which there had 
 recently been revealed the august sources from which 
 knowledge, as we understand the term, has flowed with- 
 out haste or rest since the unsealing of the fountain. He 
 counts it rare fortune to have been born in such an age, 
 and rhapsodizes over the flowery meadow of knowledge 
 in which his generation rejoices, and over the vast 
 Western world recently made known. Are not the 
 artificial thunderbolts of man far more destructive than 
 those of heaven ? What praise is too high for the 
 magnet which leads men safely over perilous seas, 
 or for the art of printing? Indeed it needs but little 
 1 De Consolatione (Opera, torn. i. p. 605). 
 
294 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 more to enable man to scale the very heavens. With 
 his mind thus set upon the exploration of these new 
 fields of knowledge ; with the full realization how vast 
 was the treasure lying hid therein ; it was only natural 
 that a spirit so curious and greedy of fresh mental food 
 should have fretted at the piteous brevity of the earthly 
 term allowed to man, and have rated as a supreme evil 
 that old age which brought with it decay of the faculties 
 and foreshadowed the speedy and inevitable fall of the 
 curtain. Cicero on the other hand had been nurtured in 
 a creed and philosophy alike outworn. The blight 
 of finality had fallen upon the moral world, and the 
 physical universe still guarded jealously her mighty 
 secrets. To the eyes of Cicero the mirror of nature was 
 blank void and darkness, while Cardan, gazing into the 
 same glass, must have been embarrassed with the 
 number and variety of the subjects offered, and may 
 well have felt that the longest life of man ten times 
 prolonged would rank but as a moment in that Titanic 
 spell of work necessary to bring to the birth the teeming 
 burden with which the universe lay in travail. Here is 
 one and perhaps the strongest reason of his hatred of 
 old age ; because through the shortness of his span of 
 time he could only deal with a grain or two of the sand 
 lying upon the shores of knowledge. Cicero, with his 
 more limited vision, conscious that sixty years or so of 
 life would exhaust every physical delight, and blunt and 
 mar the intellectual ; ignorant both of the world of new 
 light lying beyond the void, and of the rapture which 
 the conquering investigator of the same must feel in 
 wringing forth its secrets, welcomed the gathering 
 shades as friendly visitants, a mood which has asserted 
 itself in later times with certain weary spirits, sated with 
 
JEROME CARDAN 295 
 
 knowledge as Vitellius was sated with his banquets of 
 nightingales' tongues. 
 
 Cardan with all his curiosity and restless mental 
 activity was hampered and restrained in his explorations 
 by the bonds which had been imposed upon thought 
 during the rule of authority. These bonds held him 
 back acting imperceptibly as they held back Abelard 
 and many other daring spirits trained in the methods of 
 the schoolmen, and allowed him to do little more than 
 range at large over the fields of fresh knowledge which 
 were destined to be reaped by later workers trained in 
 other schools and under different masters. Learning 
 was still subject to authority, though in milder degree, 
 than when Thomas of Aquino dominated the mental 
 outlook of Europe, and the great majority of the men 
 who posed as Freethinkers, and sincerely believed them- 
 selves to be Freethinkers, were unconsciously swayed by 
 the associations of the method of teaching they professed 
 to despise. Their progress for the most part resembled 
 the movement of a squirrel in a rotatory cage, but though 
 their efforts to conquer the new world of knowledge 
 were vain, it cannot be questioned that the restrictions 
 placed around them, while nullifying the result of their 
 investigations, stimulated enormously the activity of the 
 brain and gave it a formal discipline which proved of the 
 highest value when the real literary work of Modern 
 Europe began. The futilities of the problems upon 
 which the scholastic thinkers exercised themselves gave 
 occasion for the satiric onslaught both of Rabelais and 
 Erasmus. " Quaestio subtilissima, utrum Chimaera in 
 vacuo bombinans possit comedere secundas intentiones ; 
 et fuit debatuta per decem hebdomadas in Consilio 
 Constantiensi," and "Quid consecrasset Petrus, si 
 
296 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 consecrasset eo tempore, quo corpus Christ! pendebet in 
 cruce ? " are samples which will be generally familiar, 
 but the very absurdity of these exercitations serves to 
 prove how strenuous must have been the temper of the 
 times which preferred to exhaust itself over such 
 banalities as are typified by the extracts above written, 
 rather than remain inactive. The dogmas in learning 
 were fixed as definitely as in religion, and the solution of 
 every question was found and duly recorded. The 
 Philosopher was allowed to strike out a new track, but if 
 he valued his life or his ease, he would take care to 
 arrive finally at the conclusion favoured by authority. 
 
 Cardan may with justice be classed both with men of 
 science and men of letters. In spite of the limitations 
 just referred to it is certain that as he surveyed the 
 broadening horizon of the world of knowledge, he must 
 have felt the student's spasm of agony when he first 
 realized the infinity of research and the awful brevity of 
 time. His reflections on old age give proof enough of 
 this. If he missed the labour in the full harvest-field, 
 the glimpse of the distant mountain tops, suffused for 
 the first time by the new light, he missed likewise the 
 wearing labour which fell upon the shoulders of those 
 who were compelled by the new philosophy to use new 
 methods in presenting to the world the results of their 
 midnight research. Such work as Cardan undertook in 
 the composition of his moral essays, and in the Com- 
 mentary on Hippocrates put no heavy tax on the brain 
 or the vital energies ; the Commentary was of portentous 
 length, but it was not much more than a paraphrase 
 with his own experiences added thereto. Mathematics 
 were his pastime, to judge by the ease and rapidity with 
 which he solved the problems sent to him by Francesco 
 
JEROME CARDAN 297 
 
 Sambo of Ravenna and others. 1 He worked hard no 
 doubt, but as a rule mere labour inflicts no heavier 
 penalty than healthy fatigue. The destroyer of vital 
 power and spring is hard work, combined with that un- 
 sleeping diligence which must be exercised when a man 
 sets himself to undertake something more complex than 
 the mere accumulation of data, when he is forced to 
 keep his mental powers on the strain through long 
 hours of selection and co-ordination, and to fix and con- 
 centrate his energies upon the task of compelling into 
 symmetry the heap of materials lying under his hand. 
 The De Subtilitate and the De Varietate are standing 
 proofs that Cardan did not overstrain his powers by 
 exertion of this kind. 
 
 Leaving out of the reckoning his mathematical 
 treatises, the vogue enjoyed by Cardan's published 
 works must have been a short one. They came to the 
 birth only to be buried in the yawning graves which 
 lie open in every library. At the time when Spon 
 brought out his great edition in ten folio volumes in 
 1663, the mists of oblivion must have been gathering 
 around the author's fame, and in a brief space his words 
 ceased to have any weight in the teaching of that Art he 
 had cultivated with so great zeal and affection. The 
 mathematician who talked about " Cardan's rule " to his 
 pupils was most likely ignorant both of his century and 
 his birthplace. Had it not been for the references made 
 by writers like Burton to his dabblings in occult learning, 
 his claims to read the stars, and to the guidance of a 
 
 i. p. 113. On the same page he adds:" Fui autem 
 tarn felix in cito absoluendo, quam infelicissimus in sero incho- 
 ando. Ccepi enim ilium anno aetatis meae quinquagesimo octavo, 
 absolvi intra septem dies ; pene prodigio similis." 
 
298 JEROME CARDAN 
 
 peculiar spirit, his name would have been now unknown, 
 save to a few algebraists ; and his desire, expressed in 
 one of the meditative passages of the De Vita Propria, 
 would have been amply fulfilled : " Non tamen unquam 
 concupivi gloriam aut honores : imo sprevi, cuperem 
 notum esse quod sim, non opto ut sciatur qualis sim." l 
 
 1 De Vita Propriety ch. ix. p. 30. 
 
INDEX 
 
 ADDA, battle, 7 
 Alberio, Antonio, 4 
 Alciati, Cardinal, 212, 233 
 Algebra, 65, 73, 98, 235 
 Appearance of Cardan, 19 
 Apuleius, 231, 256, 264 
 Archinto, Filippo, 40, 41, 46, 54 
 Aristotle, 16, 105, 108, 224, 240, 
 
 256, 288 
 
 Arithmetic, 54, 61, 71, 91, 290 
 Astrology, 5, 54, 259 
 Avicenna, 224, 268 
 
 Bandarini, Altobello, 35 38, 163 
 Lucia (Cardan's wife), 35, 37, 
 
 39 40, 57, 67, 163 
 Bayle, I, 154, 245 
 Bologna, 193, 195, 201205, 2O 7> 
 
 212, 220, 224 
 
 Borgo, Fra Luca da, 76, 92, 96, 97 
 Borromeo, Carlo, 193, 194, 202, 
 
 210, 233 
 
 Count, 55, 259 
 
 Browne, Sir T., 56, 154, 210, 267 
 Brissac, Marquis, 54, 122, 131 
 
 Camutio, 170, 171, 256, 264 
 Cantone, Otto, 9, n 
 Cardano, Aldo, 164, 165, 170, 172, 
 203, 212, 243 
 
 Fazio, i, 2, 10, 15, 22, 68, 
 
 69, 162, 238, 245, 267 
 
 Gasparo, 103, 130, 132 
 
 Gian Battista, 40, 102, 103, 164 
 
 180, 199, 261 
 
 Niccolo, 21 
 
 Cassanate, G., 117 122, 126, 225, 
 
 266 
 Cavenago, Ambrogio, 58, 59, 60, 
 
 266 
 
 Cheke, Sir J., 139, 258 
 Chiara (Cardan's daughter), 148, 
 
 213 
 
 Chiromancy, no 
 
 Cicero, 259, 290 291, 294 
 
 Colla, Giovanni, 73, 76, 81, 83, 85, 
 
 93, 97. 
 Consolation*^ De, 57, 62, 117, 164, 
 
 288 
 
 Croce, Francesco della, 47, 61 
 Luca della, 58 60, 266 
 
 D'Avalos, Alfonso, 57, 61, 63, 84, 
 
 85, 88, 89 
 Deaf mutes, 274 
 Demons, 115, 147, 155, 229 
 Denmark, King of, 100, 144, 282 
 Diet, Cardan's, 251 : for the Arch- 
 bishop of St. Andrews, 128 
 Diseases, Cardan's, 5, 7, 31, 33, 
 
 251 
 
 Doctorate of Padua, 23, 30 
 Dreams, Cardan's, 20, 34, 48, 104, 
 235 
 
 Edinburgh, 113, 125, 126 
 Edward VI., 132 139, 282 
 English, the, 141 
 Erasmus, 148, 163, 226, 295 
 
 Familiar spirit of Cardan, 227, 229, 
 
 258 
 
 of Faizo Cardano, 12, 227 
 
 Ferrari, Ludovico, 54, 73, 94 96, 
 
 98, 211 
 
 Ferreo, Scipio, 54, 73, 76, 77, 97 
 Fioravanti, 189, 190, 192, 197 
 Fiore Antonio, 73, 76, 77, 79, 80, 
 
 82,97 
 
 Gaddi, Franc., 47 
 
 Galen, 55, 170, 239, 240, 260268, 
 
 270273 
 
 Gallarate, I, 39, IO2, 258 
 Gambling, 22, 27, 28, 32, 42, 62, 
 
 163 
 
300 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Geniturarum Exempla, 4, 136 
 Geometry, 70 
 Glanvil, Jos., 279281 
 Greek, study of, 232, 288 
 
 Hamilton, James, Earl of Arran, 
 
 120, 121, 124 
 
 Hippocrates, 59, 223, 255, 260, 
 268, 270273, 296 
 
 Horace, 287, 289 
 
 Horoscope of Cardan, 5, 248 
 
 Aldo Cardano, 165 
 
 Cheke, 258 
 
 Christ, 55, 221, 257, 285, 286 
 
 Edward VI., 133, 259 
 
 Gian Battista Cardano, 258 
 
 Ranconet, 259 
 
 the Archbishop of St. An- 
 drews, 130, 258 
 
 Immortalitate Animorum, De, 61, 
 
 284 
 
 Imprisonment of Cardan, 219, 231 
 Index, Congregation of the, 197 
 
 Juan Antonio, 79, 81 83 
 
 Lanza, Donato, 58, 257 
 Latin, study of, 12, 279, 282 
 Lawsuits, 31, 48, 267, 275 
 Leonardo Pisano, 74 76, 97 
 Libris Propriis, De, 160, 213, 235 
 Lyons, 12 1 
 
 Mahomet the Algebraist, 74 
 
 Ben Musa, 75, 98 
 
 Margarita, 6, 21, 163, 249 
 
 Medicine, state of, 267 
 
 Micheria Chiara (Cardan's mother), 
 
 i, 3, 27, 39, 4i,42, 46, 292 
 Milan, College of, 31, 3^, 41, 47, 
 
 52, 57, 61, 62, 145, 276 
 Moroni, Cardinal, 65, 210, 217 220 
 Music, 163, 235, 256 
 
 Naude, Gabriel, 96, 155, 156, 165, 
 246249, : 253, 254, 256, 264, 
 290 
 
 Niger, Josephus, 228, 279 
 
 Northumberland, Duke of, '133, 136, 
 138, 139 
 
 Orontius, 123 
 Osiander, A., 72 
 
 Paciolus, Luca, 74 
 Padua, University, 23 30 
 
 Paracelsus, 163, 269 
 
 Paris, 119, 121 
 
 Parker, Dr. S., 282, 283 
 
 Pavia, University, 18, 22, 53, 63, 65, 
 
 100, 116, 170, 183, 195, 269 
 Paul III., Pope, 54, 65, 100 
 Peckham, John, 16, 236 
 Petreius, 65 
 Petrus, 158, 159 
 Pharnelius [Kernel], 123, 260 
 Phthisis, cure of, 118, 256 
 Pius IV., 193, 197, 220, 221, 233 
 
 V., 220 223, 225, 282 
 
 Plat Lectureship, 46, 64, 66, 70 
 Porro, Branda, 170, 171, 204, 256, 
 
 264 
 Portents, 38, 40, 64, 161, 166, 173, 
 
 175, 184, 205207, 216, 219, 
 
 231, 238, 278 
 
 Precepts for Children, 164, 276 
 Ptolemceide Astromm Jiidiciis, 147, 
 
 154, 159, 235, 256, 285 
 
 Ranconet, A., 123, 130, 132, 145, 
 
 259 
 
 Ranke, Von, 220, 223 
 Rectorship at Padua, 23, 2628 
 Rigone, 176, 182 
 Rome, 224, 233, 242 
 Rosso, Galeazzo, 14, 106 
 
 Sacco, 10, 30, 32, 67, 1 10, 258, 267 
 
 Bartolomeo, 172, 174, 176 
 
 Saint Andrews, Abp. of, 112, 113, 
 
 118 122, 124, 126, 131, 146 
 
 148, 257, 265, 257 
 Sapientia, De, 57, 117, 260 
 Scaliger, J. C., 61, 148157, 237, 
 
 254, 284286 
 
 Scot, Reginald, 159, 163, 256, 265 
 Scotland, in 116, 141 
 Scoto, Ottaviano, 51, 147 
 Scotus, Duns, 113 141 
 Seroni, Brandonia, 168, 170, 172, 
 
 176 180, 231 
 
 Evangelista, 168, 177, 182 
 
 Sessa, Duca di, 175, 182, 199, 
 
 200 
 
 Sfondrato, Francesco, 58, 59, 6 1 
 Shetlands, 113 
 Socrates, 228, 230 
 Subtilitate, De, 104117, 149, 158, 
 
 221, 228 
 
 Suisset (Swineshead), 113, 141 
 Sylvestro, Rodolfo, 211, 219, 231 
 
 234 
 Sylvius, 123 
 
INDEX 
 
 301 
 
 Tartaglia, Niccolo, 73, 7599, 236 
 Thuanus [de Thou], 155, 221, 237, 
 
 244, 278 
 
 Tiboldo, G., 265 
 Troilus and Dominicus, story of, 
 
 241, 243 
 
 Utilitate, De, 4, 184, 290 
 
 Varietate, De, 104117, 154, I5 8 > 
 159, 227, 249 
 
 Vesalius, 100, 101, 123, 261, 270 
 Vicomercato, Antonio, 62 
 Visconti, Ercole, 183, 188, 192 
 Vita Propria, De, 9, 45, 161, 235, 
 237, 244, 246, 249, 250, 284, 285, 
 
 Weir, Johann, 209, 210 
 William, the English boy, 139 
 141, 186, 187 
 
RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, 
 LONDON & BUNGAY. 
 
14 DAY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or 
 
 on the date to which renewed. 
 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 
 
 1)1*121978 
 
 PHYSICS 
 
 REC'D LC 
 
 MAY 13 -65 -4 
 
 SEC. 018. 
 
 b 19T1 7 
 
 ^.^f/^71 
 
 LD 21A-50m-8,'61 
 (Cl795slO)476B 
 
 Gnt 
 University 
 Ben 
 
YC 22774 
 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY