JEROME CARDAN

CHAPTER I

Like certain others of the illustrious personages who flourished in his time, Girolamo Cardano, or, as he has become to us by the unwritten law of nomenclature, Jerome Cardan, was fated to suffer the burden and obloquy of bastardy.[1] He was born at Pavia from the illicit union of Fazio Cardano, a Milanese jurisconsult and mathematician of considerable repute, and a young widow, whose maiden name had been Chiara Micheria, his father being fifty-six, and his mother thirty-seven years of age at his birth. The family of Fazio was settled at Gallarate, a town in Milanese territory, and was one which, according to Jerome's contention, could lay claim to considerable antiquity and distinction. He prefers a claim of descent from the house of Castillione, founding the same upon an inscription on the apse of the principal church at Gallarate.[2] He asserts that as far back as 1189 Milo Cardano was Governor of Milan for more than seven years, and according to tradition Franco Cardano, the commander of the forces of Matteo Visconti,[3] was a member of the family. If the claim of the Castillione ancestry be allowed the archives of the race would be still farther enriched by the name of Pope Celestine IV., Godfrey of Milan, who was elected Pope in 1241, and died the same year.

Cardan's immediate ancestors were long-lived. The sons of Fazio Cardano, his great-grandfather, Joanni, Aldo, and Antonio, lived to be severally ninety-four, eighty-eight, and eighty-six years of age. Of these Joanni begat two sons: Antonio, who lived eighty-eight years, and Angelo, who reached the age of eighty-six. To Aldo were born Jacopo, who died at seventy-two; Gottardo, who died at eighty-four; and Fazio, the father of Jerome, who died at eighty.[4]

Fazio, albeit he came of such a long-lived stock, and lived himself to be fourscore, suffered much physical trouble during his life. On account of a wound which he had received when he was a youth, some of the bones of his skull had to be removed, and from this time forth he never dared to remain long with his head uncovered. When he was fifty-nine he swallowed a certain corrosive poison, which did not kill him, but left him toothless. He was likewise round-shouldered, a stammerer, and subject to constant palpitation of the heart; but in compensation for these defects he had eyes which could see in the dark and which needed not spectacles even in advanced age.

Of Jerome's mother little is known. Her family seems to have been as tenacious of life as that of Fazio, for her father Jacopo lived to be seventy-five years of age. Of his maternal grandfather Jerome remarks that he was a highly skilled mathematician, and that when he was about seventy years of age, he was cast into prison for some offence against the law. He speaks of his mother as choleric in temper, well dowered with memory and mental parts, small in stature and fat, and of a pious disposition,[5] and declares that she and his father were alike in one respect, to wit that they were easily moved to anger and were wont to manifest but lukewarm and intermittent affection for their child. Nevertheless they were in a way indulgent to him. His father permitted him to remain in bed till the second hour of the day had struck, or rather forbade him to rise before this time—an indulgence which worked well for the preservation of his health. He adds that in after times he always thought of his father as possessing the kindlier nature of the two.[6]

It would seem from the passage above written, as well as from certain others subsequent, that Jerome had little affection for his mother; and albeit he neither chides nor reproaches her, he never refers to her in terms so appreciative and loving as those which he uses in lamenting the death of his harsh and tyrannical father. In the Geniturarum Exempla[7] he says that, seeing he is writing of a woman, he will confine his remarks to saying that she was ingenious, of good parts, generous, upright, and loving towards her children. Perhaps the fact that his father died early, while his mother lived on for many years, and was afterwards a member of his household—together with his wife—may account for the colder tone of his remarks while writing about her. She was the widow of a certain Antonio Alberio,[8] and during her marriage had borne him three children, Tommaso, Catilina, and Joanni Ambrogio; but when Jerome was a year old all three of these died of the plague within the space of a few weeks.[9] He himself narrowly escaped death from the same cause, and this attack he attributes to an inherited tendency from his mother, she having suffered from the same disease during her girlhood. There seems to have been born to Fazio and Chiara another son, who died at birth.[10]

Jerome Cardan was born on September 24, 1501, between half-past six o'clock and a quarter to seven in the evening. In the second chapter of his autobiography he gives the year as 1500, and in De Utilitate, p. 347, he writes the date as September 23, but on all other occasions the date first written is used. Before he saw the light malefic influences were at work against him. His mother, urged on no doubt by the desire to conceal her shame, and persuaded by evil counsellors, drank a potion of abortive drugs in order to produce miscarriage,[11] but Nature on this occasion was not to be baulked. In recording the circumstances of his birth he writes at some length in the jargon of astrology to show how the celestial bodies were leagued together so as to mar him both in body and mind. "Wherefore I ought, according to every rule, to have been born a monster, and, under the circumstances, it was no marvel that it was found necessary to tear me from the womb in order to bring me into the world. Thus was I born, or rather dragged from my mother's body. I was to all outward seeming dead, with my head covered with black curly hair. I was brought round by being plunged in a bath of heated wine, a remedy which might well have proved hurtful to any other infant. My mother lay three whole days in labour, but at last gave birth to me, a living child."[12]