286 JEROME CARDAN 



that no one was to believe he had any intention of 

 asserting that Christ's divinity, or His miracles, or His 

 holy life, or the promulgation of His laws were in any 

 way influenced by the stars. 1 Maude", in recording the 

 censures of De Thou, "Verum extremae amentiae fuit, 

 imo impiae audaciae, astrorum commentitiis legibus 

 verum astrorum dominum velle subjicere. Quod ille 

 tamen exarata Servatoris nostri genitura fecit," and of 

 Joseph Scaliger, " impiam dicam magis, an 'jocularem 

 audaciam quae et dominum stellarum stellis subjecerit, 

 et natum eo tempore putarit, quod adhuc in lite positum 

 est, ut vanitas cum impietate certaret," 2 declares that it 

 was chiefly from the publication of this horoscope that 

 Cardan incurred the suspicion of blasphemy ; but, with 

 his free-thinking bias, abstains from adding his own 

 censure. He rates Scaliger for ignorance because he 

 was evidently under the impression that Cardan was the 

 first to draw a horoscope of Christ, and attacks Cardan 

 chiefly on the score of plagiary. He records how divers 

 writers in past times had done the same thing. Albu- 

 masar, one of the most learned of the Arabs, whose 

 thema natalium is quoted by Roger Bacon in one of his 

 epistles to Clement V., Albertus Magnus, Peter d'Ailly 

 the Cardinal of Cambrai, and Tiberius Russilanus who 

 lived in the time of Leo X., all constructed nativities 

 of Christ, but Cardan makes no mention of these 

 horoscopists, and, according to the view of Naud6, 

 poses as the inventor of this form of impiety, and is 

 consequently guilty of literary dishonesty, a worse sin, in 

 his critics' eyes, than the framing of the horoscope itself. 

 That there was in Cardan's practice enough of 

 curiosity and independence to provoke suspicion of his 



1 Ptolemai de Astrorum Judiciis, p. 163. 



2 Prczfatio in Manilium. 



