116 JEROME CARDAN. 



proper home for a Cardan. The town was within one 

 mile of a castle which the Cardans claimed as an ancestral 

 hall. At Gallarate a Cardan might claim the respect that 

 he was unable to command in Milan. As for the Milanese, 

 the College of Jurisconsults had at first been nearly as 

 hostile to Fazio the father, as the physicians were to 

 Jerome the son, and in the next generation the same 

 spirit was displayed 1 . Now the Cardans claimed to be of 

 the noble blood of the Castellione, who were at home near 

 Gallarate, and in confirmation of their claim pointed to 

 inscriptions upon the prothema of a church known to 

 all the people of that little town. Jerome at first believed 

 this claim to be a true one, and was not unwilling to be 

 called Girolamo Castellione Cardano. He is to be found so 

 named after his death by many writers, but in his lifetime 

 he formally and conscientiously abjured the second name, 

 because he convinced himself that he had no right to 

 bear it 2 . In April, 1533, however, when, towards the end 



1 " Nam et pater meus ut ab eo accepi, diu in ingressu coll. jurisc. 

 laboravit, et ego ut alias testatus sum, bis a medicorum Patavino, 

 toties filius meus natu major, a Ticiuensi, uterque a Mediolanensi 

 rejecti sumus." De Lib. Prop. (1557) p. 188. 



2 In the dedication to the revised edition of De Malo Medendi Usu. 

 Since the name that he disclaimed is still commonly ascribed to him, 

 it will be well to quote a part of his distinct repudiation of it. " Pude- 

 bat me inter reliqua, nimia pietate, patris siquidem verbis persuasus, 

 qui hocpalam, nescio quo ductus errore, affirmabatj Castilioneum nomen 

 addidisse: cum certum habeam, revolutis omnibus publicis tabulis, 

 majorum meonun, ad annum usque MCCCXL. qui ab hoc, ccvi. est, nihil 

 mihi cum Castilioneis commune esse," 



