RECTOR. 61 



After it was re-opened, the prevalent confusion and dis- 

 tress made it impossible to find men who would add to all 

 their other worldly loss the burden of the rector's office. 

 For about ten years after that date, therefore, says a 

 chronicler of the university 1 , there were no rectors. In 

 1526 there is set down the name of one, and there was 

 one in each of the two succeeding years. In 1529 there 

 was again a rector for the jurisconsults, and another for 

 the artists. The year, therefore, of Cardan's rectorate, 

 1525, is considered blank, and although Jerome, after two 

 ballots, by a majority of one 2 , obtained leave to assume the 

 responsibilities which every wise man declined, he took 

 none of the honours of the office. It entitled him at once 3 

 to the degree of doctor without trouble or expense,, but 

 the degree was shortly afterwards refused to him. I do 

 not think that he was enrolled as a citizen of Padua, and 

 I am sure that he was not admitted at Venice into the 

 equestrian order. He seems, in fact, to have received 

 none of the rector's privileges, and he was accounted 

 nobody by the university, his year of office being called 



1 Papadopoli, vol. i. pp. 95, 96. The list of rectors is there interrupted 

 thus at the year 1508. "Re Gymnastica intermissu ob Cameracense 

 bellum, mox restituta anno MDXV, a restitutione per annos circiter 

 decem Rectoribus caruit Gymnasium." The list is then resumed at the 

 year 1526. 



2 Cardan de Vit. Propr. p. 17. 



3 The succeeding particulars concerning the office of Rector of the 

 Gymnasium at Padua in the sixteenth century, are from Tomasini's 

 first book, ch. xix. to xxii. 



