Jerome Cardan | Page 7

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, qu��d (tam mal�� �� 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.