WHEN dealing with Cardan's sudden incarceration in 1570, in the chronicle
of his life, it was assumed that his offence must have been some spoken or
written words upon which a charge of impiety might have been fastened.
Leaving out of consideration the fiery zeal of the reigning Pope Pius V.,
it is hard to determine what plea could have been found for a serious
charge of this nature. Cardan's work had indeed passed the ecclesiastical
censors in 1562; but in the estimation of Pius V. the smallest lapse from
the letter of orthodoxy would have seemed grave enough to send to prison,
and perhaps to death, a man as deeply penetrated with the spirit of
religion as Cardan assuredly was. One of his chief reasons for refusing
the King of Denmark's generous offer was the necessity involved of having
to live amongst a people hostile to the Catholic religion; and, in writing
of his visit to the English Court, he declares that he was unwilling to
recognize the title of King Edward VI., inasmuch as by so doing he might
seem to prejudice the rights of the Pope.[277] In spite of this positive
testimony, and the absence of any utterances of manifest heresy, divers
writers in the succeeding century classed him with the unbelievers. Dr.
Samuel Parker in his _Tractatus de Deo_, published in 1678, includes him
amongst the atheistical philosophers; but a perusal of the Doctor's
remarks leaves the reader unconvinced as to the justice of such a charge.
The term Atheism, however, was at this time used in the very loosest
sense, and was even applied to disbelievers in the apostolical
succession.[278] Dr. Parker writes, "Another cause which acted, together
with the natural disposition of Cardan, to produce that odd mixture of
folly and wisdom in him, was his habit of continual thinking by which the
bile was absorbed and burnt up; he suffered neither eating, pleasure, nor
pain to interrupt the course of his thoughts. He was well acquainted with
the writings of all the ancients--nor did he just skim over the heads and
contents of books as some do who ought not to be called learned men, but
skilful bookmongers. Every author that Cardan read (and he read nearly
all) he became intimately acquainted with, so that if any one disputing
with him, quoted the authority of the ancients, and made any the least
slip or mistake, he would instantly set them right." Dr. Parker is as
greatly amazed at the mass of work he produced, as at his powers of
accumulation, and maintains that Cardan believed he was endowed with a
faculty which he calls _repræsentatio_, through which he was able to
apprehend things without study, "by means of an interior light shining
within him. From which you may learn the fact that he had studied with
such enduring obstinacy that he began to persuade himself that the visions
which appeared before him in these fits and transports of the mind, were
the genuine inspirations of the Deity." This is evidently Dr. Parker's
explanation of the attendant demon, and he ends by declaring that Cardan
was rather fanatic than infidel.
Mention has been made of the list of his vices and imperfections which
Cardan wrote down with his own hand. Out of such a heap of self-accusation
it would have been an easy task for some meddlesome enemy to gather up a
plentiful selection of isolated facts which by artful combination might be
so arranged as to justify a formal charge of impiety. The most definite of
these charges were made by Martin del Rio,[279] who declares that Cardan
once wrote a book on the Mortality of the Soul which he was wont to
exhibit to his intimate friends. He did not think it prudent to print this
work, but wrote another, taking a more orthodox view, called _De
Immortalitate Animorum_. Another assailant, Theophile Raynaud, asserts
that certain passages in this book suggest, if they do not prove, that
Cardan did not set down his real opinions on the subject in hand. Raynaud
ends by forbidding the faithful to read any of Cardan's books, and
describes him as "Homo nullius religionis ac fidei, et inter clancularios
atheos secundi ordinis ævo suo facile princeps." Of all Cardan's books the
_De Immortalitate Animorum_ is the one in which materials for a charge of
impiety might most easily be found. It was put together at a time when he
had had very little practice in the Greek tongue, and it is possible that
many of his conclusions may be drawn from premises only imperfectly
apprehended. Scaliger in his Exercitations seizes upon one passage[280]
which, according to his rendering, implied that Cardan reckoned the
intelligence of men and beasts to be the same in essence, the variety of
operation being produced by the fact that the apprehensive faculty was
inherent in the one, and only operative upon the other from without. But
all through this book it is very difficult to determine whether the
propositions advanced are Cardan's own, or those of the Greek and Arabian
writers he quotes so freely: and this charge of Scaliger, which is the
best supported of all, goes very little way to convict him of impiety. In
the _De Vita Propria_ there are several passages[281] which suggest a
belief akin to that of the Anima Mundi; he had without doubt made up his
mind that this work should not see the light till he was beyond the reach
of Pope or Council. The origin of this charge of impiety may be referred
with the best show of probability to his attempt to cast the horoscope of
Jesus Christ.[282] This, together with a diagram, is given in the
Commentaries on Ptolemy, and soon after it appeared it was made the
occasion of a fierce attack by Julius Cæsar Scaliger, who declared that
such a scheme must be flat blasphemy, inasmuch as the author proved that
all the actions of Christ necessarily followed the position of the stars
at the time of His nativity. If Scaliger had taken the trouble to glance
at the Commentary he would have discovered that Cardan especially guarded
himself against any accusation of this sort, by setting down that no one
was to believe he had any intention of asserting that Christ's divinity,
or His miracles, or His holy life, or the promulgation of His laws were in
any way influenced by the stars.[283] Naudé, in recording the censures of
De Thou, "Verum extremæ amentiæ fuit, imo impiæ audaciæ, astrorum
commentitiis legibus verum astrorum dominum velle subjicere. Quod ille
tamen exarata Servatoris nostri genitura fecit," and of Joseph Scaliger,
"impiam dicam magis, an jocularem audaciam quæ et dominum stellarum
stellis subjecerit, et natum eo tempore putarit, quod adhuc in lite
positum est, ut vanitas cum impietate certaret,"[284] declares that it was
chiefly from the publication of this horoscope that Cardan incurred the
suspicion of blasphemy; but, with his free-thinking bias, abstains from
adding his own censure. He rates Scaliger for ignorance because he was
evidently under the impression that Cardan was the first to draw a
horoscope of Christ, and attacks Cardan chiefly on the score of plagiary.
He records how divers writers in past times had done the same thing.
Albumasar, one of the most learned of the Arabs, whose _thema natalium_ is
quoted by Roger Bacon in one of his epistles to Clement V., Albertus
Magnus, Peter d'Ailly the Cardinal of Cambrai, and Tiberius Russilanus who
lived in the time of Leo X., all constructed nativities of Christ, but
Cardan makes no mention of these horoscopists, and, according to the view
of Naudé, poses as the inventor of this form of impiety, and is
consequently guilty of literary dishonesty, a worse sin, in his critics'
eyes, than the framing of the horoscope itself.
That there was in Cardan's practice enough of curiosity and independence
to provoke suspicion of his orthodoxy in the minds of the leaders of the
post-Tridentine revival, is abundantly possible; but there is nothing in
all his life and works to show that he was, according to the standard of
every age, anything else than a spiritually-minded man.[285] It would be
hard to find words more instinct with the true feeling of piety, than the
following taken from the fifty-third chapter of the _De Vita Propria_,--"I
love solitude, for I never seem to be so entirely with those who are
especially dear to me as when I am alone. I love God and the spirit of
good, and when I am by myself I let my thoughts dwell on these, their
immeasurable beneficence; the eternal wisdom, the source and origin of
clearest light, that true joy within us which never fears that God will
forsake us; that groundwork of truth; that willing love; and the Maker of
us all, who is blessed in Himself, and likewise the desire and safeguard
of all the blessed. Ah, what depth and what height of righteousness,
mindful of the dead and not forgetting the living. He is the Spirit who
protects me by His commands, my good and merciful counsellor, my helper
and consoler in misfortune."
Two or three of Cardan's treatises are in the _materna lingua_, but he
wrote almost entirely in Latin, using a style which was emphatically
literary.[286] His Latin is probably above the average excellence of the
age, and if the classic writers held the first place in his estimation--as
naturally they would--he assuredly did not neglect the firstfruits of
modern literature. Pulci was his favourite poet. He evidently knew Dante
and Boccaccio well, and his literary insight was clear enough to perceive
that the future belonged to those who should write in the vulgar tongue of
the lands which produced them.[287]
Perhaps it was impossible that a man endowed with so catholic a spirit and
with such earnest desire for knowledge, should sink into the mere pedant
with whom later ages have been made acquainted through the farther
specialization of science. At all events Cardan is an instance that the
man of liberal education need not be killed by the man of science. For him
the path of learning was not an easy one to tread, and, as it not seldom
happens, opposition and coldness drove him on at a pace rarely attained by
those for whom the royal road to learning is smoothed and prepared. For a
long time his father refused to give him instruction in Latin, or to let
him be taught by any one else, and up to his twentieth year he seems to
have known next to nothing of this language which held the keys both of
letters and science. He began to learn Greek when he was about
thirty-five, but it was not till he had turned forty that he took up the
study of it in real earnest;[288] and, writing some years later, he gives
quotations from a Latin version of Aristotle.[289] In his commentaries on
Hippocrates he used a Latin text, presumably the translation of Calvus
printed in Rome in 1525, and quotes Epicurus in Latin in the _De
Subtilitate_ (p. 347), but in works like the _De Sapientia_ and the _De
Consolatione_ he quotes Greek freely, supplying in nearly every case a
Latin version of the passages cited. These treatises bristle with
quotations, Horace being his favourite author. "Vir in omni sapientiæ
genere admirandus."[290] As with many moderns his love for Horace did not
grow less as old age crept on, for the _De Vita Propria_ is perhaps fuller
of Horatian tags than any other of his works. It would seem somewhat of a
paradox that a sombre and earnest nature like Cardan's should find so
great pleasure in reading the elegant _poco curante_ triflings of the
Augustan singer, were it not a recognized fact that Horace has always been
a greater favourite with serious practical Englishmen than with the
descendants of those for whom he wrote his verses.
It was a habit with Cardan to apologize in the prefaces of his scientific
works for the want of elegance in his Latin, explaining that the baldness
and simplicity of his periods arose from his determination to make his
meaning plain, and to trouble nothing about style for the time being; but
the following passage shows that he had a just and adequate conception of
the necessary laws of literary art. "That book is perfect which goes
straight to its point in one single line of argument, which neither leaves
out aught that is necessary, nor brings in aught that is superfluous:
which observes the rule of correct division; which explains what is
obscure; and shows plainly the groundwork upon which it is based."[291]
The _De Vita Propria_ from which this extract comes is in point of style
one of his weakest books, but even in this volume passages may here and
there be found of considerable merit, and Cardan was evidently studious to
let his ideas be presented in intelligible form, for he records that in
1535 he read through the whole of Cicero, for the sake of improving his
Latin. His style, according to Naudé, held a middle place between the
high-flown and the pedestrian, and of all his books the _De Utilitate ex
Adversis Capienda_, which was begun in 1557, shows the nearest approach to
elegance, but even this is not free from diffuseness, the fault which
Naudé finds in all his writings. Long dissertations entirely alien from
the subject in hand are constantly interpolated. In the Practice of
Arithmetic he turns aside to treat of the marvellous properties of certain
numbers, of the motion of the planets, and of the Tower of Babel; and in
the treatise on Dialectic he gives an estimate of the historians and
letter-writers of the past. But here Cardan did not sin in ignorance; his
poverty and not his will consented to these literary outrages. He was paid
for his work by the sheet, and the thicker the volume the higher the
pay.[292]
When he made a beginning of the _De Utilitate_ Cardan was at the zenith of
his fortunes. He had lately returned from his journey to Scotland, having
made a triumphant progress through the cities of Western Europe. Thus,
with his mind well stored with experience of divers lands, his wits
sharpened by intercourse with the _élite_ of the learned world, and his
hand nerved by the magnetic stimulant of success, he sat down to write as
the philosopher and man of the world, rather than as the man of science.
He was, in spite of his prosperity, inclined to deal with the more sombre
side of life. He seems to have been specially drawn to write of death,
disease, and of the peculiar physical misfortune which befell him in early
manhood. Like Cicero he goes on to treat of Old Age, but in a spirit so
widely different that a brief comparison of the conclusions of the two
philosophers will not be without interest. Old age, Cardan declares to be
the most cruel and irreparable evil with which man is cursed, and to talk
of old age is to talk of the crowning misfortune of humanity. Old men are
made wretched by avarice, by dejection, and by terror. He bids men not to
be deceived by the flowery words of Cicero,[293] when he describes Cato as
an old man, like to a fair statue of Polycleitus, with faculties
unimpaired and memory fresh and green. He next goes on to catalogue the
numerous vices and deformities of old age, and instances from Aristotle
what he considers to be the worst of all its misfortunes, to wit that an
old man is well-nigh cut off from hope; and by way of comment grimly adds,
"If any man be plagued by the ills of old age he should blame no one but
himself, for it is by his own choice that his life has run on so long." He
vouchsafes a few words of counsel as to how this hateful season may be
robbed of some of its horror. Our bodies grow old first, then our senses,
then our minds. Therefore let us store our treasures in that part of us
which will hold out longest, as men in a beleaguered city are wont to
collect their resources in the citadel, which, albeit it must in the end
be taken, will nevertheless be the last to fall into the foeman's hands.
Old men should avoid society, seeing that they can bring nothing thereto
worth having: whether they speak or keep silent they are in the way, and
they are as irksome to themselves when they are silent, as they are to
others when they speak. The old man should take a lesson from the lower
animals, which are wont to defend themselves with the best arms given them
by nature: bulls with their horns, horses with their hoofs, and cats with
their claws; wherefore an old man should at least show himself to be as
wise as the brutes and maintain his position by his wisdom and knowledge,
seeing that all the grace and power of his manhood must needs have
fled.[294]
In another of his moral treatises he has formulated a long indictment
against old age, that hateful state with its savourless joys and sleepless
nights. Did not Zeno the philosopher strangle himself when he found that
time refused to do its work. The happiest are those who earliest lay down
the burden of existence, and the Law itself causes these offenders who are
least guilty to die first, letting the more nefarious and hardened
criminals stand by and witness the death of their fellows. There can be no
evil worse than the daily expectation of the blow that is inevitable, and
old age, when it comes, must make every man regret that he did not die in
infancy. "When I was a boy," he writes, "I remember one day to have heard
my mother, Chiara Micheria--herself a young woman--cry out that she wished
it had been God's will to let her die when she was a child. I asked her
why, and she answered: 'Because I know I must soon die, to the great peril
of my soul, and besides this, if we shall diligently weigh and examine all
our experiences of life, we shall not light upon a single one which will
not have brought us more sorrow than joy. For afflictions when they come
mar the recollection of our pleasures, and with just cause; for what is
there in life worthy the name of delight, the ever-present burden of
existence, the task of dressing and undressing every day, hunger, thirst,
evil dreams? What more profit and ease have we than the dead? We must
endure the heat of summer, the cold of winter, the confusion of the times,
the dread of war, the stern rule of parents, the anxious care of our
children, the weariness of domestic life, the ill carriage of servants,
lawsuits, and, what is worst of all, the state of the public mind which
holds probity as silliness; which practises deceit and calls it prudence.
Craftsmen are counted excellent, not by their skill in their art, but by
reason of their garish work and of the valueless approbation of the mob.
Wherefore one must needs either incur God's displeasure or live in misery,
despised and persecuted by men.'"[295] These words, though put into his
mother's mouth, are manifestly an expression of Cardan's own feelings.
Cardan was the product of an age to which there had recently been revealed
the august sources from which knowledge, as we understand the term, has
flowed without haste or rest since the unsealing of the fountain. He
counts it rare fortune to have been born in such an age, and rhapsodizes
over the flowery meadow of knowledge in which his generation rejoices, and
over the vast Western world recently made known. Are not the artificial
thunderbolts of man far more destructive than those of heaven? What praise
is too high for the magnet which leads men safely over perilous seas, or
for the art of printing? Indeed it needs but little more to enable man to
scale the very heavens. With his mind thus set upon the exploration of
these new fields of knowledge; with the full realization how vast was the
treasure lying hid therein; it was only natural that a spirit so curious
and greedy of fresh mental food should have fretted at the piteous brevity
of the earthly term allowed to man, and have rated as a supreme evil that
old age which brought with it decay of the faculties and foreshadowed the
speedy and inevitable fall of the curtain. Cicero on the other hand had
been nurtured in a creed and philosophy alike outworn. The blight of
finality had fallen upon the moral world, and the physical universe still
guarded jealously her mighty secrets. To the eyes of Cicero the mirror of
nature was blank void and darkness, while Cardan, gazing into the same
glass, must have been embarrassed with the number and variety of the
subjects offered, and may well have felt that the longest life of man ten
times prolonged would rank but as a moment in that Titanic spell of work
necessary to bring to the birth the teeming burden with which the universe
lay in travail. Here is one and perhaps the strongest reason of his hatred
of old age; because through the shortness of his span of time he could
only deal with a grain or two of the sand lying upon the shores of
knowledge. Cicero, with his more limited vision, conscious that sixty
years or so of life would exhaust every physical delight, and blunt and
mar the intellectual; ignorant both of the world of new light lying beyond
the void, and of the rapture which the conquering investigator of the same
must feel in wringing forth its secrets, welcomed the gathering shades as
friendly visitants, a mood which has asserted itself in later times with
certain weary spirits, sated with knowledge as Vitellius was sated with
his banquets of nightingales' tongues.
Cardan with all his curiosity and restless mental activity was hampered
and restrained in his explorations by the bonds which had been imposed
upon thought during the rule of authority. These bonds held him
back--acting imperceptibly--as they held back Abelard and many other
daring spirits trained in the methods of the schoolmen, and allowed him to
do little more than range at large over the fields of fresh knowledge
which were destined to be reaped by later workers trained in other schools
and under different masters. Learning was still subject to authority,
though in milder degree, than when Thomas of Aquino dominated the mental
outlook of Europe, and the great majority of the men who posed as
Freethinkers, and sincerely believed themselves to be Freethinkers, were
unconsciously swayed by the associations of the method of teaching they
professed to despise. Their progress for the most part resembled the
movement of a squirrel in a rotatory cage, but though their efforts to
conquer the new world of knowledge were vain, it cannot be questioned that
the restrictions placed around them, while nullifying the result of their
investigations, stimulated enormously the activity of the brain and gave
it a formal discipline which proved of the highest value when the real
literary work of Modern Europe began. The futilities of the problems upon
which the scholastic thinkers exercised themselves gave occasion for the
satiric onslaught both of Rabelais and Erasmus. "Quæstio subtilissima,
utrum Chimæra in vacuo bombinans possit comedere secundas intentiones; et
fuit debatuta per decem hebdomadas in Consilio Constantiensi," and "Quid
consecrasset Petrus, si consecrasset eo tempore, quo corpus Christi
pendebet in cruce?" are samples which will be generally familiar, but the
very absurdity of these exercitations serves to prove how strenuous must
have been the temper of the times which preferred to exhaust itself over
such banalities as are typified by the extracts above written, rather than
remain inactive. The dogmas in learning were fixed as definitely as in
religion, and the solution of every question was found and duly recorded.
The Philosopher was allowed to strike out a new track, but if he valued
his life or his ease, he would take care to arrive finally at the
conclusion favoured by authority.
Cardan may with justice be classed both with men of science and men of
letters. In spite of the limitations just referred to it is certain that
as he surveyed the broadening horizon of the world of knowledge, he must
have felt the student's spasm of agony when he first realized the infinity
of research and the awful brevity of time. His reflections on old age give
proof enough of this. If he missed the labour in the full harvest-field,
the glimpse of the distant mountain tops, suffused for the first time by
the new light, he missed likewise the wearing labour which fell upon the
shoulders of those who were compelled by the new philosophy to use new
methods in presenting to the world the results of their midnight research.
Such work as Cardan undertook in the composition of his moral essays, and
in the Commentary on Hippocrates put no heavy tax on the brain or the
vital energies; the Commentary was of portentous length, but it was not
much more than a paraphrase with his own experiences added thereto.
Mathematics were his pastime, to judge by the ease and rapidity with which
he solved the problems sent to him by Francesco Sambo of Ravenna and
others.[296] He worked hard no doubt, but as a rule mere labour inflicts
no heavier penalty than healthy fatigue. The destroyer of vital power and
spring is hard work, combined with that unsleeping diligence which must be
exercised when a man sets himself to undertake something more complex than
the mere accumulation of data, when he is forced to keep his mental powers
on the strain through long hours of selection and co-ordination, and to
fix and concentrate his energies upon the task of compelling into symmetry
the heap of materials lying under his hand. The _De Subtilitate_ and the
_De Varietate_ are standing proofs that Cardan did not overstrain his
powers by exertion of this kind.
Leaving out of the reckoning his mathematical treatises, the vogue enjoyed
by Cardan's published works must have been a short one. They came to the
birth only to be buried in the yawning graves which lie open in every
library. At the time when Spon brought out his great edition in ten folio
volumes in 1663, the mists of oblivion must have been gathering around the
author's fame, and in a brief space his words ceased to have any weight in
the teaching of that Art he had cultivated with so great zeal and
affection. The mathematician who talked about "Cardan's rule" to his
pupils was most likely ignorant both of his century and his birthplace.
Had it not been for the references made by writers like Burton to his
dabblings in occult learning, his claims to read the stars, and to the
guidance of a peculiar spirit, his name would have been now unknown, save
to a few algebraists; and his desire, expressed in one of the meditative
passages of the _De Vita Propria_, would have been amply fulfilled: "Non
tamen unquam concupivi gloriam aut honores: imo sprevi, cuperem notum esse
quod sim, non opto ut sciatur qualis sim."[297]
FOOTNOTES:
[277] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xxix. p. 76.
[278] Dugald Stewart, _Dissertations_, p. 378.
[279] The writer, a Jesuit, says in _Disquisitionum Magicarum_ (Louvanii,
1599), tom. i.:--"In Cardani de Subtilitate et de Varietate libris passim
latet anguis in herba et indiget expurgatione Ecclesiasticæ limæ." Del Rio
was a violent assailant of Cornelius Agrippa.
[280] "Quoniam intellectus intrinsecus est homini, belluis extrinsecus
collucet: unus etiam satisfacere omnibus, quæ in una specie sunt potest,
hominibus plures sunt necessarii: tertia est quod hominis anima tanquam
speculum est levigata, splendida, solida, clara: belluarum autem tenebrosa
nec levis; atque ideo in nostra anima lux mentis refulget multipliciter
confracta, inde ipse Intellectus intelligit. Ceteris autem potentiis, ut
diximus, nullus limes prescriptus est: at belluarum internis facultatibus
tantum licet agnoscere, quantum per exteriores sensus accesserit."--_De
Imm. Anim.,_ p. 283.
[281] "Deum debere dici immensum: omnia quæ partes habent diversas
ordinatas animam habere et vitam."--p. 167.
[282] In the last edition of _De Libris Propriis_ he calls it "Christique
nativitas admirabilis."--_Opera_, tom. i. p. 110.
[283] _Ptolemæi de Astrorum Judiciis_, p. 163.
[284] _Præfatio in Manilium_.
[285] A proof of his liberal tone of mind is found in his appreciation of
the fine qualities of Edward VI. as a man, although he resented his
encroachments as a king upon the Pope's rights.
[286] In the _De Vita Propria_, ch. xxxiii. p. 106, he fixes into his
prose an entire line of Horace, "Canidia afflasset pejor serpentibus
Afris."
[287] "At Boccatii fabulæ nunc majus virent quam antea: et Dantis
Petrarchæque ac Virgilii totque aliorum poemata sunt in maxima
veneratione."--_Opera_, tom. i. p. 125.
[288] _Ibid.,_ tom. i. p. 59.
[289] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xii.-xiii. pp. 39, 44.
[290] _Opera_, tom. i. p. 505.
[291] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xxvii. p. 72.
[292] "Eo tantum fine, quemadmodum alicubi fatetur, ut plura folia
Typographis mitteret, quibuscum antea de illorum pretio pepigerat; atque
hoc modo fami, non secus ac famæ scriberet."--Naudæus, _Judicium_.
[293] In _De Consolatione_ (_Opera_, tom. i. p. 604) he writes:--"Quantum
diligentiæ, quantum industriæ Cicero adjecit, quo conatu nixus est ut
persuaderet senectutem esse tolerandam."
[294] _De Utilitate_, book ii. ch. 4.
[295] _De Consolatione_ (_Opera_, tom. i. p. 605).
[296] _Opera_, tom. i. p. 113. On the same page he adds:--"Fui autem tam
felix in cito absoluendo, quam infelicissimus in sero inchoando. Coepi
enim illum anno ætatis meæ quinquagesimo octavo, absolvi intra septem
dies; pene prodigio similis."
[297] _De Vita Propria_, ch. ix. p. 30.
INDEX
Adda, battle, 7
Alberio, Antonio, 4
Alciati, Cardinal, 212, 233
Algebra, 65, 73, 98, 235
Appearance of Cardan, 19
Apuleius, 231, 256, 264
Archinto, Filippo, 40, 41, 46, 54
Aristotle, 16, 105, 108, 224, 240, 256, 288
Arithmetic, 54, 61, 71, 91, 290
Astrology, 5, 54, 259
Avicenna, 224, 268
Bandarini, Altobello, 35-38, 163
Bandarini, Lucia (Cardan's wife), 35, 37, 39, 40, 57, 67, 163
Bayle, 1, 154, 245
Bologna, 193, 195, 201-205, 207, 212, 220, 224
Borgo, Fra Luca da, 76, 92, 96, 97
Borromeo, Carlo, 193, 194, 202, 210, 233
Borromeo, Count, 55, 259
Browne, Sir T., 56, 154, 210, 267
Brissac, Marquis, 54, 122, 131
Camutio, 170, 171, 256, 264
Cantone, Otto, 9, 11
Cardano, Aldo, 164, 165, 170, 172, 203, 212, 243
Cardano, Fazio, 1, 2, 10, 15, 22, 68, 69, 162, 238, 245, 267
Cardano, Gasparo, 103, 130, 132
Cardano, Gian Battista, 40, 102, 103, 164-180, 199, 261
Cardano, Niccolo, 21
Cassanate, G., 117-122, 126, 225, 266
Cavenago, Ambrogio, 58, 59, 60, 266
Cheke, Sir J., 139, 258
Chiara (Cardan's daughter), 148, 213
Chiromancy, 110
Cicero, 259, 290-291, 294
Colla, Giovanni, 73, 76, 81, 83, 85, 93, 97
_Consolatione, De_, 57, 62, 117, 164, 288
Croce, Francesco della, 47, 61
Croce, Luca della, 58-60, 266
D'Avalos, Alfonso, 57, 61, 63, 84, 85, 88, 89
Deaf mutes, 274
Demons, 115, 147, 155, 229
Denmark, King of, 100, 144, 282
Diet, Cardan's, 251: for the Archbishop of St. Andrews, 128
Diseases, Cardan's, 5, 7, 31, 33, 251
Doctorate of Padua, 23, 30
Dreams, Cardan's, 20, 34, 48, 104, 235
Edinburgh, 113, 125, 126
Edward VI., 132-139, 282
English, the, 141
Erasmus, 148, 163, 226, 295
Familiar spirit of Cardan, 227, 229, 258
Familiar spirit of Fazio Cardano, 12, 227
Ferrari, Ludovico, 54, 73, 94-96, 98, 211
Ferreo, Scipio, 54, 73, 76, 77, 97
Fioravanti, 189, 190, 192, 197
Fiore Antonio, 73, 76, 77, 79, 80, 82, 97
Gaddi, Franc., 47
Galen, 55, 170, 239, 240, 260-268, 270-273
Gallarate, 1, 39, 102, 258
Gambling, 22, 27, 28, 32, 42, 62, 163
_Geniturarum Exempla_, 4, 136
Geometry, 70
Glanvil, Jos., 279-281
Greek, study of, 232, 288
Hamilton, James, Earl of Arran, 120, 121, 124
Hippocrates, 59, 223, 255, 260, 268, 270-273, 296
Horace, 287, 289
Horoscope of Cardan, 5, 248
Horoscope of Aldo Cardano, 165
Horoscope of Cheke, 258
Horoscope of Christ, 55, 221, 257, 285, 286
Horoscope of Edward VI., 133, 259
Horoscope of Gian Battista Cardano, 258
Horoscope of Ranconet, 259
Horoscope of the Archbishop of St. Andrews, 130, 258
_Immortalitate Animorum, De_, 61, 284
Imprisonment of Cardan, 219, 231
Index, Congregation of the, 197
Juan Antonio, 79, 81-83
Lanza, Donato, 58, 257
Latin, study of, 12, 279, 282
Lawsuits, 31, 48, 267, 275
Leonardo Pisano, 74-76, 97
_Libris Propriis, De_, 160, 213, 235
Lyons, 121
Mahomet the Algebraist, 74
Mahomet Ben Musa, 75, 98
Margarita, 6, 21, 163, 249
Medicine, state of, 267
Micheria Chiara (Cardan's mother), 1, 3, 27, 39, 41, 42, 46, 292
Milan, College of, 31, 38, 41, 47, 52, 57, 61, 62, 145, 276
Moroni, Cardinal, 65, 210, 217-220
Music, 163, 235, 256
Naudé, Gabriel, 96, 155, 156, 165, 246-249, 253, 254, 256, 264, 290
Niger, Josephus, 228, 279
Northumberland, Duke of, 133, 136, 138, 139
Orontius, 123
Osiander, A., 72
Paciolus, Luca, 74
Padua, University, 23-30
Paracelsus, 163, 269
Paris, 119, 121
Parker, Dr. S., 282, 283
Pavia, University, 18, 22, 53, 63, 65, 100, 116, 170, 183, 195, 269
Paul III., Pope, 54, 65, 100
Peckham, John, 16, 236
Petreius, 65
Petrus, 158, 159
Pharnelius [Fernel], 123, 260
Phthisis, cure of, 118, 256
Pius IV., 193, 197, 220, 221, 233
Pius V., 220-223, 225, 282
Plat Lectureship, 46, 64, 66, 70
Porro, Branda, 170, 171, 204, 256, 264
Portents, 38, 40, 64, 161, 166, 173, 175, 184, 205-207, 216, 219, 231,
238, 278
Precepts for Children, 164, 276
_Ptolemæi de Astrorum Judiciis_, 147, 154, 159, 235, 256, 285
Ranconet, A., 123, 130, 132, 145, 259
Ranke, Von, 220, 223
Rectorship at Padua, 23, 26-28
Rigone, 176, 182
Rome, 224, 233, 242
Rosso, Galeazzo, 14, 106
Sacco, 10, 30, 32, 67, 110, 258, 267
Sacco, Bartolomeo, 172, 174, 176
Saint Andrews, Abp. of, 112, 113, 118-122, 124, 126, 131, 146-148, 257,
265, 257
_Sapientia, De_, 57, 117, 260
Scaliger, J.C., 61, 148-157, 237 254, 284-286
Scot, Reginald, 159, 163, 256, 265
Scotland, 111-116, 141
Scoto, Ottaviano, 51, 147
Scotus, Duns, 113-141
Seroni, Brandonia, 168, 170, 172, 176-180, 231
Seroni, Evangelista, 168, 177, 182
Sessa, Duca di, 175, 182, 199, 200
Sfondrato, Francesco, 58, 59, 61
Shetlands, 113
Socrates, 228, 230
_Subtilitate, De_, 104-117, 149, 158, 221, 228
Suisset (Swineshead), 113, 141
Sylvestro, Rodolfo, 211, 219, 231, 234
Sylvius, 123
Tartaglia, Niccolo, 73, 75-99, 236
Thuanus [de Thou], 155, 221, 237 244, 278
Tiboldo, G., 265
Troilus and Dominicus, story of, 241, 243
_Utilitate, De_, 4, 184, 290
_Varietate, De_, 104-117, 154, 158, 159, 227, 249
Vesalius, 100, 101, 123, 261, 270
Vicomercato, Antonio, 62
Visconti, Ercole, 183, 188, 192
_Vita Propria, De_, 9, 45, 161, 235, 237, 244, 246, 249, 250, 284, 285,
289
Weir, Johann, 209, 210
William, the English boy, 139-141, 186, 187
Transcriber's notes
Page 299 Faizo corrected to Fazio Typographical errors in equations
corrected.
a with macron [a=]
e with macron [e=]
u with macron [u=]
o with macron [o=]
m with tilde [m~]