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JEROME CARDAN
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
LAWRENCE & BULLEN, Limited,
16 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, 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 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
_mémoires 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 emendation 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 church at Gallarate.[2] 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,[3] 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.[4]
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 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,[5] 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.[6]
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. In the _Geniturarum Exempla_[7]
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,[8] 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.[9] 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.[10]
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 persuaded by evil counsellors, drank a potion of
abortive drugs in order to produce miscarriage,[11] 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 circumstances, 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."[12]
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,[13]--was an eruption of carbuncles on the face in the
form of a cross, one of the sores being set on the tip of 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.[14] 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 afterwards 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 afterwards of her harshness. It must
be remembered, however, that these details are taken from a record of the
writer's fifth year set down when he was past seventy.[15] 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 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.[16] 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 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
consideration 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, wherefore 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 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."[17]
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.[18] 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 transformed 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 exhibited 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 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
procession 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
emoluments which Fazio drew from his profession were sufficient 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 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 indication we gather of his worldly wisdom is his
dissatisfaction 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.[19]
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.[20] What with the hardness and irritability of the teacher, and the
peevishness inseparable from the pupil's physical feebleness and morbid
overwrought 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[21] 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
intelligence. For with boys of this sort it is well to make use of the bit
as though you were dealing with mules. Beyond this he was witty and
diverting in his conversation, and given to the telling of stories and
strange occurrences 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.
"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 Franciscan brotherhood. But at the beginning of my twenty-first
year[22] 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 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.[23] 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 towards 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 corrupted 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."[24]
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 principle
of the water-screw of Archimedes before the description 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 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,[25] though the learned
language would have been just as necessary 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 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 teaching in the schools of the city, together with its
accompanying 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.'[26] Indeed the following verses were printed
thereanent:
'Hoc Cardana viro gaudet domus: omnia novit
Unus: habent nullum saecula nostra parem.'
"These words may be taken as a sort of augury referring 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
rumour says that he was a master), never let his mind take in aught that
was new. The rudiments of mathematics 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 encountered but
few hindrances--remained unconvinced by any of his exhortations."[27]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Bayle is unwilling to admit Cardan's illegitimate birth. In _De
Consolatione_, Opera, tom. i. p. 619 (Lyons, 1663), Cardan writes in
reference to the action of the Milanese College of Physicians: "Medicorum
collegium, suspitione obortâ, quòd (tam malè à 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, tom. i. p. 676, Cardan declares
that his father openly spoke of him as a bastard.
[2] _De Utilitate ex adversis Capienda_ (Franeker, 1648), p. 357.
[3] 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.
[4] _De Vita Propria_ (Amsterdam, 1654), ch. i. p. 4.
[5] Cardan makes a statement in _De Consolatione_, Opera, tom. 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."
[6] _De Vita Propria_, ch. i. p. 4.
[7] _Geniturarum Exempla_ (Basil, 1554), p. 436.
[8] _De Rerum Varietate_ (Basil, 1557), p. 655.
[9] _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
dem[o=]strat, me solo diu post eti[a=] illius mort[e=] superstite."
[10] With regard to the union of his parents he writes: "Uxorem vix duxit
ob Lunam afflictam et eam in senectute."--_Geniturarum Exempla_, p. 435.
[11] "Igitur ut ab initio exordiar, in pestilentia conceptus, matrem,
nondum natus (ut puto) mearum calamitatum participem, profugam
habui."--_Opera_, tom. i. p. 618.
"Mater ut abortiret medicamentum abortivum dum in utero essem, alieno
mandato bibit."--_De Utilitate_, p. 347.
[12] _De Vita Propria_, ch. ii. p. 6.
[13] In one passage, _De Utilitate_, p. 348, he sums up his physical
misfortunes: "Hydrope, febribus, aliisque morbis conflictatus sum, donec
sub fine octavi anni ex dysenteria ac febre usque ad mortis limina
perveni, pulsavi ostium sed non aperuere qui intro erant."
[14] "Inde lac praegnantis hausi per varias nutrices lactatus ac
jactatus."--_De Utilitate_, p. 348.
[15] The _De Vita Propria_, the chief authority for these remarks, was
written by Cardan in Rome shortly before his death.
[16] 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.
[17] _De Vita Propria_, ch. iv. p. ii.
[18] _Opera_, tom. i. p. 676.
[19] "Quod munus profitendi institutiones in urbe ipsa cum honorario
centum coronatorum, quo jam tot annis gaudebat, non in me (ut speraverat)
transiturum intelligebat."--_De Vita Propria_, ch. x. p. 35.
[20] "Pater jam antè concesserat ut Geometriæ et Dialecticæ operam darem,
in quo (quanquam præter paucas admonitiones, librosque, ac licentiam,
nullum aliud auxilium præbuerit) eas tamen ego (succicivis temporibus
studens) interim feliciter sum assecutus."--_De Consolatione_, Opera, tom.
i. p. 619.
[21] "Facius Cardanus dæmonem ætherium, ut ipse dicebat, diu familiarem
habuit; qui quamdiu conjuratione usus est, vera illi dabat responsa, cùm
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_, tom. i. p. 672), Cardan writes: "Pater
honeste obiit et ex senio, sed multo antea eum Genius ille reliquerat."
[22] There is a discrepancy between this date and the one given in _De
Vita Propria_, ch. iv. p. 11. "Anno exacto XIX contuli me in Ticinensem
Academiam."
[23] "Inde (desiderium augente absentiâ) mortuus est, sæviente peste, cùm
primum me diligere coepisset."--_De Consolatione_, Opera, tom. i. p. 619.
[24] _De Utilitate_, p. 348.
[25] "Nimis satis fuit defuisse tot, memoriam, linguam Latinam per
adolescentiam."--_De Vita Propria_, ch. li. p. 218.
[26] 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 learning. 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.
[27] _De Vita Propria_, ch. x. p. 34. A remark in _De Sapientia_, Opera,
tom. i. p. 578, suggests that Fazio began life as a physician: "Pater meus
Facius Cardanus Medicus primò, inde Jurisconsultus factus est."