4 JEROME CARDAN 



In the Geniturarum Exempla^ 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, 2 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. 3 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. 4 



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 



1 Geniturarum Exempla (Basil, 1554), p. 436. 



2 De Rerum Varietate (Basil, 1557), p. 655. 



3 De Utilitate, p. 347. There is a passage in Geniturarum 

 Exempla, p. 435, dealing with Fazio's horoscope, which may be 

 taken to mean that these children were his. "Alios habuisse 

 filios qui obierint ipsa genitura demostrat, me solo diu post etia 

 illius morte superstite." 



4 With regard to the union of his parents he writes: "Uxorem 

 vix duxit ob Lunam afflictam et earn in senectute." Geniturarum 

 Exempla^ p. 435. 



