JEROME CARDAN 225 



highest expression of justice. Against a fate thus 

 settled for us we have no right to complain, lest we 

 should seem to be setting ourselves into opposition to 

 God's will. Here, although he writes in the spirit of 

 a Christian, the authority cited is that of a heathen 

 philosopher, and the form of his meditations is taken 

 rather from Seneca than from father or schoolman. 

 The devotional bias of Cardan's nature seems to have 

 been strengthened temporarily by the terrible experi- 

 ences of Gian Battista's trial and death; but in the 

 course of his residence at Bologna a marked reaction 

 set in, and the fervent religious outburst, in which he 

 sought consolation during his intolerable sorrow, was 

 succeeded by a calmer mood which regarded the neces- 

 sary evils of life as transitory accidents, and death as 

 the one and certain end of sorrow, and perhaps of 

 consciousness as well. What he wrote during his resi- 

 dence in Rome he kept in manuscript ; his recent 

 experience at Bologna warned him that, living under 

 the shadow of the Vatican with Pius V. as the ruler 

 thereof, it behoved him to walk as an obedient son 

 of the Church. 



Cardan went first to live in the Piazza di San 

 Girolamo, not far from the Porto del Popolo, but 

 subsequently he lived in a house in the Via Giulia 

 near the church of Santa Maria di Monserrato, where 

 probably he died. He had not long been settled in 

 Rome before he was able to add a fresh supernatural 

 experience to his already overburdened list. In the 

 month of August 1572 he was lying awake one night 

 with a lamp burning, when suddenly he heard a loud 

 noise to the right of the chamber, as if a cart laden with 

 planks was being unloaded. He looked up, and, the 

 door being open at the time, he perceived a peasant 



