Jerome Cardan by William George Waters (important books to read .txt) 📕

altered the whole drift of this tragedy by a pretended adoption of the religious life, for I became for a time a member of the mendicant Franciscan brotherhood. But at the beginning of my twenty-first year[22] I went to the Gymnasium at Pavia, whereupon my father, feeling my absence, was softened towards me, and a reconciliation between him and my mother took place.

"Before this time I had learnt music, my mother and even my father having secretly given me money for the same; my father likewise paid for my instruction in dialectics. I became so proficient in this art that I taught it to certain other youths before I went to the University. Thus he sent me there endowed with the means of winning an honest living; but he never once spake a word to me concerning this matter, bearing himself always towards me in considerate, kindly, and pious wise.

"For the residue of his days (and he lived on well-nigh four more years) his life was a sad one, as if he would fain let it be known to the world how much he loved me.[23] Moreover, when by the working of fate I returned home while he lay sick, he besought, he commanded, nay he even forced me, all unwilling, to depart thence, what though he knew his last hour was nigh, for the reason that the plague was in the city, and he was fain that I should put myself beyond danger from the same. Even now my tears rise when I think of his goodwill towards me. But, my father, I will do all the justice I can to thy merit and to thy paternal care; and, as long as these pages may be read, so long shall thy name and thy virtues be celebrated. He was a man not to be corrupted by any offering whatsoever, and indeed a saint. But I myself was left after his death involved in many lawsuits, having nothing clearly secured except one small house."[24]

Fazio contracted a close intimacy with a certain Galeazzo Rosso, a man clever as a smith, and endowed with mechanical tastes which no doubt helped to secure him Fazio's friendship. Galeazzo discovered the principle of the water-screw of Archimedes before the description of the same, written in the books of the inventor, had been published. He also made swords which could be bent as if they were of lead, and sharp enough to cut iron like wood. He performed a more wonderful feat in fashioning iron breast-plates which would resist the impact of red-hot missiles. In the _De Sapientia_, Cardan records that when Galeazzo perfected his water-screw, he lost his wits for joy.

Fazio took no trouble to teach his son Latin,[25] though the learned language would have been just as necessary for the study of jurisprudence as for any other liberal calling, and Jerome did not begin to study it systematically till he was past nineteen years of age. Through some whim or prejudice the old man refused for some time to allow the boy to go to the University, and when at last he gave his consent he still fought hard to compel Jerome to qualify himself in jurisprudence; but here he found himself at issue with a will more stubborn than his own. Cardan writes: "From my earliest youth I let every action of mine be regulated in view of the after course of my life, and I deemed that as a career medicine would serve my purpose far better than law, being more appropriate for the end I had in view, of greater interest to the world at large, and likely to last as long as time itself. At the same time I regarded it as a study which embodied the nobler principles, and rested upon the ground of reason (that is upon the eternal laws of Nature) rather than upon the sanction of human opinion. On this account I took up medicine rather than jurisprudence, nay I almost entirely cast aside, or even fled from the company of those friends of mine who followed the law, rejecting at the same time wealth and power and honour. My father, when he heard that I had abandoned the study of law to follow philosophy, wept in my presence, and grieved amain that I would not settle down to the study of his own subject. He deemed it the more salutary discipline--proofs of which opinion he would often bring forward out of Aristotle--that it was better adapted for the acquisition of power and riches; and that it would help me more efficiently in restoring the fortunes of our house. He perceived moreover that the office of teaching in the schools of the city, together with its accompanying salary of a hundred crowns which he had enjoyed for so many years, would not be handed on to me, as he had hoped, and he saw that a stranger would succeed to the same. Nor was that commentary of his destined ever to see the light or to be illustrated by my notes. Earlier in life he had nourished a hope that his name might become illustrious as the emendator of the 'Commentaries of John, Archbishop of Canterbury on Optics and Perspective.'[26] Indeed the following verses were printed thereanent:

'Hoc Cardana viro gaudet domus: omnia novit
Unus: habent nullum saecula nostra parem.'

"These words may be taken as a sort of augury referring rather to certain other men about to set forth to do their work in the world, than to my father, who, except in the department of jurisprudence (of which indeed rumour says that he was a master), never let his mind take in aught that was new. The rudiments of mathematics were all that he possessed, and he gathered no fresh knowledge from the store-houses of Greek learning. This disposition in him was probably produced by the vast multitude of subjects to be mastered, and by his infirmity of purpose, rather than by any lack of natural parts, or by idleness or by defect of judgment; vices to which he was in no way addicted. But I, being firmly set upon the object of my wishes, for the reasons given above, and because I perceived that my father had achieved only moderate success--though he had encountered but few hindrances--remained unconvinced by any of his exhortations."[27]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Bayle is unwilling to admit Cardan's illegitimate birth. In _De Consolatione_, Opera, tom. i. p. 619 (Lyons, 1663), Cardan writes in reference to the action of the Milanese College of Physicians: "Medicorum collegium, suspitione oborta, quod (tam male a patre tractatus) spurius essem, repellebat." Bayle apparently had not read the _De Consolatione_, as he quotes the sentence as the work of a modern writer, and affirms that the word "suspitio" would not have been used had the fact been notorious. But in the _Dialogus de Morte_, Opera, tom. i. p. 676, Cardan declares that his father openly spoke of him as a bastard.

[2] _De Utilitate ex adversis Capienda_ (Franeker, 1648), p. 357.

[3] Matteo Visconti was born in 1250, and died in 1322. He was lord of Novara Vercello Como and Monferrato, and was made Vicar Imperial by Adolphus of Nassau. Though he was worsted in his conflict with John XXII. he did much to lay the foundations of his family.

[4] _De Vita Propria_ (Amsterdam, 1654), ch. i. p. 4.

[5] Cardan makes a statement in _De Consolatione_, Opera, tom. i. p. 605, which indicates that her disposition was not a happy one. "Matrem meam Claram Micheriam, juvenem vidi, cum admodum puer essem, meminique hanc dicere solitam, Utinam si Deo placuisset, extincta forem in infantia."

[6] _De Vita Propria_, ch. i. p. 4.

[7] _Geniturarum Exempla_ (Basil, 1554), p. 436.

[8] _De Rerum Varietate_ (Basil, 1557), p. 655.

[9] _De Utilitate_, p. 347. There is a passage in _Geniturarum Exempla_, p. 435, dealing with Fazio's horoscope, which may be taken to mean that these children were his. "Alios habuisse filios qui obierint ipsa genitura dem[o=]strat, me solo diu post eti[a=] illius mort[e=] superstite."

[10] With regard to the union of his parents he writes: "Uxorem vix duxit ob Lunam afflictam et eam in senectute."--_Geniturarum Exempla_, p. 435.

[11] "Igitur ut ab initio exordiar, in pestilentia conceptus, matrem, nondum natus (ut puto) mearum calamitatum participem, profugam habui."--_Opera_, tom. i. p. 618.

"Mater ut abortiret medicamentum abortivum dum in utero essem, alieno mandato bibit."--_De Utilitate_, p. 347.

[12] _De Vita Propria_, ch. ii. p. 6.

[13] In one passage, _De Utilitate_, p. 348, he sums up his physical misfortunes: "Hydrope, febribus, aliisque morbis conflictatus sum, donec sub fine octavi anni ex dysenteria ac febre usque ad mortis limina perveni, pulsavi ostium sed non aperuere qui intro erant."

[14] "Inde lac praegnantis hausi per varias nutrices lactatus ac jactatus."--_De Utilitate_, p. 348.

[15] The _De Vita Propria_, the chief authority for these remarks, was written by Cardan in Rome shortly before his death.

[16] The illness would have occurred about October 1508, and the victory of the Adda was on May 14, 1509. This fact fixes his birth in 1501, and shows that his illness must have lasted six or seven months.

[17] _De Vita Propria_, ch. iv. p. ii.

[18] _Opera_, tom. i. p. 676.

[19] "Quod munus profitendi institutiones in urbe ipsa cum honorario centum coronatorum, quo jam tot annis gaudebat, non in me (ut speraverat) transiturum intelligebat."--_De Vita Propria_, ch. x. p. 35.

[20] "Pater jam ante concesserat ut Geometriae et Dialecticae operam darem, in quo (quanquam praeter paucas admonitiones, librosque, ac licentiam, nullum aliud auxilium praebuerit) eas tamen ego (succicivis temporibus studens) interim feliciter sum assecutus."--_De Consolatione_, Opera, tom. i. p. 619.

[21] "Facius Cardanus daemonem aetherium, ut ipse dicebat, diu familiarem habuit; qui quamdiu conjuratione usus est, vera illi dabat responsa, cum autem illam exussisset, veniebat quidem, sed responsa falsa dabat. Tenuit igitur annis, ni fallor, vinginti octo cum conjuratione, solutum autem circiter quinque."--_De Varietate_, p. 629.

In the _Dialogus Tetim_ (_Opera_, tom. i. p. 672), Cardan writes: "Pater honeste obiit et ex senio, sed multo antea eum Genius ille reliquerat."

[22] There is a discrepancy between this date and the one given in _De Vita Propria_, ch. iv. p. 11. "Anno exacto XIX contuli me in Ticinensem Academiam."

[23] "Inde (desiderium augente absentia) mortuus est, saeviente peste, cum primum me diligere coepisset."--_De Consolatione_, Opera, tom. i. p. 619.

[24] _De Utilitate_, p. 348.

[25] "Nimis satis fuit defuisse tot, memoriam, linguam Latinam per adolescentiam."--_De Vita Propria_, ch. li. p. 218.

[26] John Peckham was a Franciscan friar, and was nominated to the see of Canterbury by Nicholas III. in 1279. He had spent much time in the convent of his Order at Oxford, and there is a legend connecting him with a Johannes Juvenis or John of London, a youth who had attracted the attention and benevolence of Roger Bacon. This Johannes became one of the first mathematicians and opticians of the age, and was sent to Rome by Bacon, who entrusted to him the works which he was sending to Pope Clement IV. There is no reason for this view beyond the fact that both were called John, and distinguished in the same branches of learning. The _Perspectiva Communis_ was his principal work; it does not deal with perspective as now understood, but with elementary propositions of optics. It was first printed in Milan in or about 1482.

[27] _De Vita Propria_, ch. x. p. 34. A remark in _De Sapientia_, Opera, tom. i. p. 578, suggests that Fazio began life as a physician: "Pater meus Facius Cardanus Medicus primo, inde Jurisconsultus factus est."


CHAPTER II

THE University