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 cardinal's hat, and
the secretaryship of Dataria. Another of Cardan's powerful friends was the
Prince of Matellica, 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 character of this nobleman, his munificence
and his superhuman 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
danger, whatever its nature, seems to have threatened him as a member of
the practising faculty at Rome rather than as the persecuted ex-teacher of
Pavia and Bologna. Rodolfo Sylvestro 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 1562, 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 unwillingly did him good service, that is, they procured him
leisure which he might use in the completion of his unfinished works, and
in the construction of fresh monuments 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 execution
of the _Commentarii in Ptolomæum_, 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.[239] Before leaving Bologna he had put into
shape the _Proxenata_, a lengthy collection of hints, maxims, and
reflections as to everyday life; he had re-edited the _Liber Artis Magnæ_,
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 explanation 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 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 unfinished 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 refusing to qualify
himself to become the commentator on Archbishop Peckham's _Perspectiva_.
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 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 _Medicinæ Contradictiones_ should be avoided like
deadly poison. Julius Scaliger has been fully answered in the _Apologia_
in the Books on Subtlety."[240]
There is a passage from De Thou's _History of his Own Times_, affixed to
all editions of the _De Vita Propria_,[241] 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 Cæsar Scaliger, who exercised his
extraordinary genius in making a special examination of the treatise _De
Subtilitate 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 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 François 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 distressing memories of the
imprisonment had faded, and writing 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 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.[242] 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."[243] 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 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 transactions as well, and then, when I had confirmed the
facts set forth by my method of art, I gave my judgment thereupon."[244]
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.[245]
In the _Norma Vitæ Consarcinata_[246] 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 despatched 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 following day there came a messenger from Corneto, a few miles from
Rome, saying that Troilus, who was sojourning 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.
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
understanding 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 commended 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, whereupon 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 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 accidents; 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 inconvenience, 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
1, 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 trust; if
the issue of his body should fail, then the succession 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
prædixerat, anno et die, videlicet XI. Kalend. VIII.," 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 1,
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. Bayle notices this discrepancy, and in
the same paragraph 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.
lxii. tom. 4. Romæ 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. This tomb, which Jerome had erected after Fazio's
death, bore the following inscription:
FACIO CARDANO
1.C.
Mors fuit id quod vixi: vitam mors dedit ipsa,
Mens æterna manet, gloria tuta quies.
Obiit anno MDXXIV. IV. Kalend. Sept. anno Ætatis LXXX.
Hieronymus Cardanus Medicus Parenti posterisque V.P.[247]
FOOTNOTES:
[239] "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 futuros esse
intelligerem; anno autem MDLXXIII alios CXX libros, cum jam calamitas illa
cessasset cremavi."--_De Vita Propria_, ch. xlv. pp. 174, 175.
[240] _Opera_, tom. i. p. 122.
[241] _De Vita Propria_, p. 232.
[242] _Opera_, tom. 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.
[243] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xli. p. 152.
[244] _De Vita Propria_, chapter xlii., _passim_.
[245] _Ibid.,_ p. 66.
[246] _Opera_, tom. i. p. 339.
[247] Tomasinus, _Gymnasium Patavinum_.