i 5 8 JEROME CARDAN 



first issue of the De Subtilitate, Cardan might well have 

 given himself a term of rest, but to a man of his temper, 

 idleness, or even a relaxation of the strain, is usually 

 irksome. The De Varietate was first printed at Basel 

 in 1553, and, as soon as it was out of the press, it 

 brought a trouble not indeed a very serious one 

 upon the author. The printer, Petrus of Basel (who 

 must not be confused with Petreius of Nuremberg) 

 took it upon him to add to Chapter LXXX of the work 

 some disparaging remarks about the Dominican brother- 

 hoods, making Cardan responsible for the assertion that 

 they were rapacious wolves who hunted down reputed 

 witches and despisers of God, not because of their 

 offences, but because they chanced to be the possessors 

 of much wealth. Cardan remonstrated at once he 

 always made it his practice to keep free from all theo- 

 logical wrangling, but Petrus treated the whole question 

 with ridicule, 1 and it does not seem that Cardan could 

 have had any very strong feeling in the matter, for the 

 obnoxious passage is retained in the editions of 1556 

 and 1557. The religious authorities were however fully 

 justified in assuming that the presence of such a passage 

 in the pages of a book so widely popular as the De 

 Varietate would necessarily prove a cause of scandal, 



1 " Quid tua interest quod quatuor verba adjecerim ? an hoc 

 tantum crimen est ! quid facerem absens absent! ? " Cardan writes 

 on in meditative strain : " Coeterum cum non ignorem maculates 

 fuisse codices B. Hieronimi, atque aliorum patrum nostrorum, ab his 

 qui aliter sentiebant, erroremque suum auctoritate viri tegere volue- 

 runt: ut ne quis in nostris operibus hallucinetur vel ab aliis decipiatur, 

 sciant omnes me nullibi Theologum agere, nee velle in alienam 

 messem falcem ponere." Opera, torn. i. p. 112. 



Johannes Wierus, one of the first rationalists on the subject of 

 witchcraft, has quoted largely from Chapter LXXX of De Varietate 

 in his book De Prcestigiis Dcemonum, in urging his case against 

 the orthodox view. 



