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 determined 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[112] 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 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."[113]
Cardan was now forty-six years of age, a mathematician 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 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
profession 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.[114] 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,[115] 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 immediately 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 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.[116] 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 reading
voraciously all books bearing on his studies. He 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.[117] 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 conception 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_,[118] 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 postulates 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.[119] 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 knowledge, sitting down to work with
such a projection before him, should have produced the richest, and at
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 gathering 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 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 sensitiva_ which the plant lacks, and man transcends the animal
through the gift of the _anima intellectiva_, 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.
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 _débris_ of a heap of note-books, and it would be unjust 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 imperfect
form it wears in the _De Varietate Rerum_.[120]
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_ he always contrives to bring forward
some fresh fact or fancy to illustrate 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 characteristic 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, incantations, succubi, incubi,
divinations, and such like--he spends ten in the _De Varietate_ over
kindred subjects. There is a wonderful story[121] 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
chiromancy,[122] 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
opening and closing of the hand. But the adoption of this view would have
proved more disastrous to chiromancy 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 consequential,
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 vitæ_ 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.[123]
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
memorable 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 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[124] 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[125] 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 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
intellect,[126] and he likewise notices the use of a fertilizing
earth--presumably marl--in agriculture,[127] and the longevity of the
people, some of whom have reached their hundred and twentieth year.[128]
The first notice of us in the _De Varietate_ is in praise of our forestry,
forasmuch 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 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. Andrews 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 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[129]--"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 stone produced. The mountains of
Scotland are both higher and presumably harder than those of England,
hence the carbuncles.
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.[130] 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
keeping his thoughts fixed on holy things he rid himself at last of the
unclean spirit.[131] He quotes from Boethius the whole story of
Macbeth,[132] 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 discovered, the image was destroyed, whereupon the king was
restored to health.[133]
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 1550 there came
another break in Cardan's life as Professor at Pavia, the reason being the
usual one of dearth of funds.[134] 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
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 diligently
with this object in view.[135]
At the beginning of November 1551, a letter came to him from
Cassanate,[136] 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 Sapientia_[137] 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 incorporates in his epistle.
Cardan writes there: "But if my profession 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, 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 Phthoe, a disease for many centuries deemed incurable, and I
healed many who are alive to this day as easily as I have cured the
_Gallicus 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."[138] 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 acknowledging 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, because the brain could neither
assimilate its own nutriment, nor disperse the humours which arose from
below, being weakened through its nutriment of pituitous 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."[139]
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 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 convenient 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 convert 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 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 continued 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.[140] 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 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 himself 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.[141] 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.[142] 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 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
Magnienus[143] 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,[144] 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 Cæsar still standing. Then having crossed the narrow sea I went
to London, and at last met the Archbishop at Edinburgh 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."[145]
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.
FOOTNOTES:
[112] 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_, tom. i. p. 138): "Brasavolum ... nunquam
vidi, ut neque Vesalium quamquam intimum mihi amicum."
[113] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xxxii. p. 99.
[114] In describing Fazio, Jerome writes: "Erat Euclidis operum studiosus,
et humeris incurvis: et filius meus natu major ore, oculis, incessu,
humeris, illi simillimus."--_De Vita Propria_, ch. iii. p. 8. In the same
chapter Fazio is described as "Blæsus in loquendo; variorum studiorum
amator: ruber, oculis albis et quibus noctu videret."
[115] "At uxor mea imaginabatur assidue se videre calvariam patris, qui
erat absens dum utero gereret Jo: Baptistam."--_Paralipomenon_, lib. iii.
c. 21.
[116] _De Utilitate_, p. 832.
[117] "Post ex geminatis somniis, scripsi libros de Subtilitate quos
impressos auxi et denuo superauctos tertio excudi curavi."--_De Vita
Propria_, ch. xlv. p. 175.
[118] "Libros de Rerum varietate anno MDLVIII edidi: erant enim reliquiæ
librorum de subtilitate."--_De Vita Propria_, p. 176. "Reversus in
patriam, perfeci libros XVII de Rerum varietate quos jampridem
inchoaveram."--_Opera_, tom. i. p. 110. He had collected much material
during his life at Gallarate.
[119] Aristotle, _Metaphysics_, book I. ch. v., contains an examination of
the Pythagorean doctrine which maintains Number to be the Substance of all
things:--[Greek: all' auto to apeiron kai auto to hen ousian einai toutôn
ôn katêgorountai.]
[120] "Sed nullus major labor quam libri de Rerum Varietate quem cum
sæpius mutassem, demum traductis quibuscunque insignioribus rebus in
libros de Subtilitate, ita illum exhausi, ut totus denuo conscribendus
fuerit atque ex integro restituendus."--_Opera_, tom. i. p. 74.
He seems to have utilized the services of Ludovico Ferrari in compiling
this work.--_Opera_, tom. i. p. 64.
[121] _De Varietate_, p. 661.
[122] Book XV. ch. lxxix.
[123] 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 prædicam ei aliquid de vita; dixi delusum esse a sociis, urget, veniam
peto si quicquam gravius prædixero: 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.
[124] "Ergo nunc Britannia inclyta vellere est. Nec mirum cum null[u=]
animal venenat[u=] mittat, imò nec infestum præter vulpem, olim et lupum:
nunc vero exterminatis etiam lupis, tutò pecus vagat. Rore coeli sitim
sedant greges, ab omni alio potu arcentur, quod aquæ ibi ovibus sint
exitiales: quia tamen in pabulo humido vermes multi abundant, cornic[u=]
adeo multitudo crevit, ut ob frugum damna nuper publico consilio illas
perdentibus proposita præmia sint: ubi enim pabulum, ibi animalia sunt quæ
eo vescuntur, atque immodicè tunc multiplicantur cum ubique abundaverit.
Caret tamen ut dixi, serpentibus, tribus ex causis: nam pauci possunt
generari ob frigus immensum."--_De Subtilitate_, p. 298.
[125] Æneas 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.
[126] "Ejusdem insulæ accola fuit Ioannes, ut dixi, Suisset [Richard
Swineshead] cognom[e=]to Calculator; in cujus solius unius argumenti
solutione, quod contra experiment[u=] est de actione mutua tota laboravit
posteritas; quem senem admodum, nec inventa sua dum legeret intelligentem,
flevisse referunt. Ex quo haud dubium esse reor, quod etiam in libro de
animi immortalite scripsi, barbaros ingenio nobis haud esse inferiores:
quandoquidem sub Brumæ cælo divisa toto orbe Britannia duos tam clari
ingenii viros emiserit."--_De Subtilitate_, p. 444.
[127] _Ibid.,_ p. 142.
[128] p. 369.
[129] 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.
[130] _De Varietate_, p. 636.
[131] _De Varietate_, p. 637.
[132] _Ibid.,_ p. 637.
[133] _Ibid.,_ p. 565.
[134] "Peracto L anno quod stipendium non remuneraretur mansi
Mediolani."--_De Vita Propria_, ch. iv. p. 15.
[135] About this time he wrote the _Liber Decem Problematum_, and the
treatise _Delle Burle Calde_, one of his few works written in
Italian.--_Opera_, tom. i. p. 109.
[136] Cassanate's letter is given in full (_Opera_, tom. i. p. 89).
[137] The quotation from the _De Sapientia_ differs somewhat from the
original passage which stands on p. 578 of the same volume.
[138] _Opera_, tom. i. p. 89.
[139] In a subsequent interview with Cardan, Cassanate modifies this
statement.--_Opera_, tom. ix. p. 124.
[140] "Accepique antequam discederem aureos coronatos Gallicos 500 et
M.C.C. in reditu."--_De Vita Propria_, ch. iv. p. 16.
[141] "Difficillimis causis victus venire non potui." The Archbishop's
letter is given in _Opera_, tom. i. p. 137.
[142] _Geniturarum Exempla_, p. 469.
[143] 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.
[144] 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.
[145] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xxix. p. 75. Cardan refers more than once to
the generosity of the Archbishop. He computes (_Opera_, tom. i. p. 93)
that his visit must have cost Hamilton four talents of gold; that is to
say, two thousand golden crowns.