Jerome Cardan: A Biographical Study. W. G. Waters
having suffered greatly in health during my absence. For what with cruel vexations, and struggles, and cares which I saw impending, and a troublesome cough and pleurisy aggravated by a copious discharge of humour, I was brought into a condition such as few men exchange for aught else besides a coffin."[44]
The closing words of his eulogy on his father tell how the son, on the father's death, found that one small house was all he could call his own. The explanation of this seems to be that the old man, being of a careless disposition and litigious to boot, had left his affairs in piteous disorder. In consequence of this neglect Jerome was involved in lawsuits for many years, and the one afore-mentioned with the Barbiani was one of them. This case was subsequently settled in Jerome's favour.
FOOTNOTES:
[28] Pavia, like certain modern universities, did not spend all its time over study. "Aggressus sum Mediolani vacationibus quadragenariæ, seu Bacchanalium potius, anni MDLXI. Ita enim non obscurum est, nostra ætate celebrari ante quadragenariam vacationes, in quibus ludunt, convivantur, personati ac larvati incedunt, denique nullum luxus ac lascivæ genus omittunt: Sybaritæ et Lydi Persæque vincuntur." Opera, tom. i. p. 118.
[29] These books were taken to Blois. They were subsequently removed by Francis I. to Fontainebleau, and with the other collections formed the nucleus of the Bibliothèque Nationale.
[30] De Vita Propria, ch. v. p. 18.
[31] The time covered by this experience was from his fourth to his seventh year.
[32] De Vita Propria, ch. xxxvii. p. 114; De Rerum Subtilitate (Basil, 1554), p. 524.
[33] Opera, tom. i. p. 61.
[34] "Erat liber exiguus, rem tamen probe absolvebat: nam tunc forte in manus meas inciderat, Gebri Hispani liber, cujus auxilio non parum adjutus sum."—Opera, tom. i. p. 56.
[35] "Initio multi quidem paupertate aliave causa quum se nolunt subjicere rigoroso examini Cl. Collegii in artibus Medicinae vel in Jure, Baccalaureatus, vel Doctoratus gradum a Comitibus Palatinis aut Lateranensibus sumebant. Postea vero, sublata hac consuetudine, Gymnasii Rector, sive substitutus, convocatis duobus professoribus, bina puncta dabantur, iisque recitatis et diligentis [sic] excussis, illis gradus Baccalaureatus conferebatur."—Gymnasium Patavinum (1654), p. 200.
[36] He constantly bewails this step as the chief folly of his life: "Stulte vero id egi, quod Rector Gymnasii Patavini effectus sum, tum, cum, inops essem, et in patria maxime bella vigerent, et tributa intolerabilia. Matris tamen solicitudine effectum est, ut pondus impensarum, quamvis aegre, sustinuerim."—De Utilitate, p. 350.
[37] De Vita Propria, ch. iv. p. 11.
[38] Muratori, Chron. di Bologna, xviii. 254.
[39] The stipends paid to teachers of jurisprudence were much more liberal than those paid to humanists. In the Diary of Sanudo it is recorded that a jurist professor at Padua received a thousand ducats per annum. Lauro Quirino, a professor of rhetoric, meantime received only forty ducats, and Laurentius Valla at Pavia received fifty sequins.—Muratori, xxii. 990.
[40] Tomasinus, Gymnasium Patavinam (1654), p. 136.
[41] Tomasinus writes that the Rector should be "Virum illustrem, providum, eloquentem ac divitem, quique eo pollet rerum usu ut Gymnasi decora ipsius gubernatione et splendore augeantur."—Gymnasium Patavinum, p. 54. He likewise gives a portrait of the Rector in his robes of office, and devotes several chapters to an account of his duties.
[42] "Ab anno 1509 usque ad annum 1515 ob bellum Cameracense Gymn. interrmissum fuit."—Elenchus nominum Patavii (1706), p. 28. The first names given after this interregnum are Dom. Jo. Maria de Zaffaris, Rector in Arts, and Dom. Marinus de Ongaris, Rector in Jurisprudence in 1527.
Papadapoli (Historia Gymn. Patav.) gives the name of Ascanius Serra as pro-Rector in 1526: no Rector being mentioned at all.
[43] De Vita Propria, ch. xxx. p. 79.
[44] De Vita Propria, ch. iv. p. 13.
CHAPTER III
During his life at Padua it would appear that Cardan, over and above the allowance made to him by his mother, had no other source of income than the gaming-table.[45] However futile and disastrous his sojourn at this University may have been, he at least took away with him one possession of value, to wit his doctorate of medicine, on the strength of which he began to practise as a country physician at Sacco. The record of his life during these years gives the impression that he must have been one of the most wretched of living mortals. The country was vexed by every sort of misfortune, by prolonged warfare, by raging pestilence, by famine, and by intolerable taxation;[46] but while he paints this picture of misery and desolation in one place, he goes on to declare in another that the time which he spent at Sacco was the happiest he ever knew.[47] No greater instance of inconsistency is to be found in his pages. He writes: "I gambled, I occupied myself with music, I walked abroad, I feasted, giving scant attention the while to my studies. I feared no hurt, I paid my respects to the Venetian gentlemen living in the town, and frequented their houses. I, too, was in the very flower of my age, and no time could have been more delightful than this which lasted for five years and a half."[48]
But for almost the whole of this period Cardan was labouring under a physical misfortune concerning which he writes in another place in terms of almost savage bitterness. During ten years of his life, from his twenty-first to his thirty-first year, he suffered from the loss of virile power, a calamity which he laments in the following words: "And I maintain that this misfortune was to me the worst of evils. Compared with it neither the harsh servitude under my father, nor unkindness, nor the troubles of litigation, nor the wrongs done me by my fellow-townsmen, nor the scorn of my fellow-physicians, nor the ill things falsely spoken against me, nor all the measureless mass of possible evil, could have brought me to such