Jerome Cardan, William George Waters [reading list TXT] 📗

no proof that Brandonia had died of poison. A physician of good repute, Vincenzo Dinaldo, swore that she had died of fever (_lipyria_), and not from the effect of poison; and five others, men of the highest character, declared that she bore no signs of poison, either externally or internally. Her tongue and extremities and her body were not blackened, nor was the stomach swollen, nor did the hair and nails show any signs of falling, nor were the tissues eaten away. In the opening of his defence Cardan attempted to discredit the character of Brandonia. He showed how great were the injuries and provocations which Gian Battista had received from her, and that she was a dissolute wanton; her father himself, when under examination, having refused to say that she was a virgin when she left his house to be married. He claimed justification for the husband who should slay his wife convicted of adultery; and here, in this case, Brandonia was convicted by her own confession. He maintained that, if homicide is to be committed at all, poison is preferable to the knife, and then he went on to weave a web of ineffectual casuistry in support of his view, which moved the Court to pity and contempt. He cited the _Lex Cornelia_, which doomed the common people to the arena, and the patricians to exile, and claimed the penalty last-named as the one fitting to the present case.[193] Then he proceeded to show that the woman had really died from natural causes; for, even granting that she had swallowed arsenic in the cake, she had vomited at once, and the poison would have no time to do its work; moreover there was no proof that Gian Battista had given specific directions to anybody to mix poison with the ingredients of the cake. The most he had done was to utter some vague words thereanent to his servant, who forthwith took the matter into his own hands.[194] If Gian Battista had known, if he had merely been suspicious that the cake was poisoned, would he have let a crumb of it pass his lips; and if any large quantity of poison had been present, would he and the other persons who had eaten thereof have recovered so quickly? Cardan next went on to argue that, whatever motive may have swayed Gian Battista at this juncture, it could not have been the deliberate intent to kill his wife, because forsooth the wretched youth was incapable of deliberate action of any sort. He could never keep in the same mood for four-and-twenty hours at a stretch. He nursed alternately in his heart vengeance and forgiveness, changing as discord or peace ruled in his house. Cardan showed what a life of misery the wretched youth had passed since his marriage. Had this life continued, the finger of shame would have been pointed at him, he must have lost his status as a member of his profession, and have been cut off from the society of all decent people; nay, he would most likely have died by the hand of one or other of his wife's paramours. This was to show how powerful was the temptation to which the husband was exposed, and again he sang the praises of poison as an instrument of "removal"; because if effectively employed, it led to no open scandal.

He next brought forward the simple and unsophisticated character of the accused, and the physical afflictions which had vexed him all his life, giving as illustrations of his son's folly the headlong haste with which he had rushed into a marriage, his folly in giving an ineffectual dose, if he really meant to poison his wife, in letting his plot be known to his servant, and in confessing. Lastly, Cardan had in readiness one of his favourite portents to lay before the Court. When Brandonia's brother had come into the house and found his father and sister sick through eating the cake, he suspected foul play and rushed at Gian Battista and at Aldo who was also there, and threatened them with his sword; but before he could harm them he fell down in a fit, his hand having been arrested by Providence. Providence had thus shown pity to this wretched youth, and now Cardan besought the Senate to be equally merciful.

Cardan's pleas were all rejected; indeed such issue was inevitable from the first, if the Senate of Milan were not determined to abdicate the primary functions of a judicial tribunal. Gian Battista was condemned to death, but a strange condition was annexed to the sentence, to wit that his life would be spared, if the prosecutors, the Seroni family, could be induced to consent. But their consent was only to be gained by the payment of a sum of money entirely beyond Cardan's means, their demand having been stimulated through some foolish boasting of the family wealth by the condemned prisoner.[195] Cardan was powerless to arrest the course of the law, and Gian Battista was executed in prison on the night of April 7, 1560.

In the whole world of biographic record it would be hard to find a figure more pathetic than that of Cardan fighting for the life of his unworthy son. No other episode of his career wins from the reader sympathy half so deep. The experience of these terrible days certainly shook still further off its balance a mind not over steady in its calmest moments. Cardan wrote voluminously and laboriously over Gian Battista's fate, but in his dirges and lamentations he never lets fall an expression of detestation or regret with regard to the crime itself: all his soul goes out in celebrating the charm and worth of his son, and in moaning over the ruin of mind, body, and estate which had fallen upon him through this cruel stroke of adverse fate. When he sat down to write the _De Vita Propria_, Cardan was strongly possessed with the belief that all through his career he had been subject to continuous and extraordinary persecution at the hands of his enemies. The entire thirtieth chapter is devoted to the description of these plots and assaults. In his earlier writings he attributes his calamities to evil fate and the influences of the stars; his wit was indeed great, and assuredly it was allied to madness, so it is not impossible that these personal foes who dogged his steps were largely the creatures of an old man's monomaniacal fancies. The persecution, he affirms, began to be so bitter as to be almost intolerable after the condemnation of Gian Battista. "Certain members of the Senate afterwards admitted (though I am sure they would be loth that men should hold them capable of such a wish) that they condemned my son to death in the hope that I might be killed likewise, or at least might lose my wits, and the powers above can bear witness how nearly one of these ills befell me. I would that you should know what these times were like, and what practices were in fashion. I am well assured that I never wrought offence to any of these men, even by my shadow. I took advice how I might put forward a defence of some kind on my son's behalf, but what arguments would have prevailed with minds so exasperated against me as were theirs?"[196]

FOOTNOTES:

[176] _De Vita Propria_, p. 57.

[177] "In ore illud semper ei erat: Omnis spiritus laudet Dominum, qui ipse est fons omnium virtutum."--_De Vita Propria_, ch. iii. p. 7. Reginald Scot, in the _Discoverie of Witchcraft_, says that the aforesaid exclamation of Fazio was the Paracelsian charm to drive away spirits that haunt any house. There is a passage in _De Consolatione_ (_Opera_, tom. i. p. 600) which gives Fazio's view of happiness after death:--"Memineram patrem meum, Facium Cardanum, cum viveret, in ore semper habuisse, se mortem optare, quod nullum suavius tempus experiretur, qu[a=] id in quo profundissime dormiens omnium quae in hac vita fiunt expers esset."

[178] Cardan gives his impressions of musicians:--"Unde nostra aetate neminem ferine musicum invenias, qui non omni redundat vitiorum genere. Itaque hujusmodi musica maximo impedimento non solum pauperi et negotioso viro est, sed etiam omnibus generaliter. Quin etiam virorum egregiorum nostrae aetatis neminem musicum agnovimus, Erasmum, Alciatum, Budaeum, Jasonem, Vesalium, Gesnerum. At vero quod domum everterit meam, si dicam, vera fatebor meo more. Nam et pecuniae non levem jacturam feci, et quod majus est, filiorum mores corrupi. Sunt enim plerique ebrii, gulosi, procaces, inconstantes, impatientes, stolidi, inertes, omnisque libidinis genere coinquinati. Optimi quique inter illos stulti sunt."--_De Utilitate_, p. 362.

[179] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xiii. p. 45.

[180] "Quid profuit haec tua industria, quis infelicior in filiis? quorum alter male periit: alter nec regi potest nec regere?"--_Opera_, tom. i. p. 109.

[181] _Opera_, tom. i. p. 614.

[182] "In caeteris erit elegans, splendidus, humanus, gravis et qui ab omnibus, potentioribusque, praesertim probetur."--_Geniturarum Exempla_, p. 464.

[183] "A scorto nuntius venit."--_De Utilitate_, p. 833.

[184] This incident is taken from the _De Utilitate_, which was written soon after the events chronicled. The account given in the _De Vita Propria_, written twenty years later, differs in some details. "Venio domum, accurrit famulus admodum tristis, nunciat Johannem Baptistam duxisse uxorem Brandoniam Seronam."--_De Vita Propria_, ch. xli. p. 147.

[185] Cardan in describing this action of Gian Battista, who was then determined to murder his wife, says of him: "Erat enim natura clemens admodum et gratus."--_De Utilitate_, p. 834.

[186] "Triduana illa disceptatio Papiae cum Camutio instituta, publicata apud Senatum: ipse primo argumento primae diei siluit."--_De Vita Propria_, ch. xii. p. 37. This does not exactly tally with Camutio's version. With regard to Cardan's assertion that his colleagues hesitated to meet him in medical discussion it may be noted that Camutio printed a book at Pavia in 1563, with the following title: "Andraeae Camutii disputationes quibus Hieronymi Cardani magni nominis viri conclusiones infirmantur, Galenus ab ejusdem injuria vindicatur, Hippocratis praeterea aliquot loca diligentius multo quam unquam alias explicantur." In his version (_De Vita Propria_, ch. xii. p. 37) Cardan inquires sarcastically: "Habentur ejusdem imagines quaedam typis excusae in Camutii monumentis."

[187] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xii. p. 39. The Third Book of the _Theonoston_ (_Opera_, tom. ii. p. 403) is in the form of a disputation, "De animi immortalite," with this same Branda.

[188] In his defence at the trial Cardan affirmed that, while Brandonia was lying sick from eating the cake, her mother and the nurse quarrelled and fought, and finally fell down upon the sick woman. When the fight was over Brandonia was dead. In _Opera_, tom. ii. p. 311 (_Theonoston_, lib. i.) he writes: "Obiit illa non veneno, sed vi morbi atque Fato quo tam inclytus juvenis morte sua, omnia turbare debuerat."

[189] "Vocatus sum enim ad Ducem Suessanum ex Ticinensi Academia accepique C. aureos coronatos et dona ex serico."--_De Vita Propria_, ch. xl. p. 138.

[190] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xli. p. 153.

[191] _Opera_, tom. i. p. 671. He cites the names of former Governors of Milan and other patrons, many of them harsh men, and not one as kind and beneficent as the Duca di Sessa; to wit Antonio Leva, Cardinal Caracio, Alfonso d'Avalos, Ferrante Gonzaga, the Cardinal of Trent, and the Duca d'Alba. Yet the rule of his best friend brought him his worst misfortune.

[192] There is a full account of the trial in an appendix to the _De Utilitate ex Adversis Capienda_ (Basel, 1561). It is not included in the edition hitherto cited.

[193] Laudabatur ejus benignitas aC simul factum Io. Petri Solarii tabellionis, qui cum filium spurium convictum haberet de veneficio, in duas sorores legitimas, solum haereditatis consequendae causa, satis habuit damnasse illum ad triremes."--_De Vita Propria_, ch. x. p. 33.

[194] "Evasit nuper ob constantiam in