210 JEROME CARDAN 



spirits infected the persons said to be possessed. The 

 devil afflicted his victims directly, and then threw 

 the suspicion of the evil deed upon some old woman. 

 Wier's book was condemned and denounced by the 

 clergy he himself was a Protestant but the most 

 serious counterblast against it came from the pen of 

 Jean Bodin, the illustrious French philosopher and jurist. 

 He held up Wier to execration as an impious blasphemer, 

 and asserted that the welfare of Christendom must needs 

 suffer great injury through the dissemination of doctrines 

 so detestable as those set forth in his book. 1 



Seeing that such a spirit was dominant in the minds 

 of men like Bodin, it will be evident that a charge of 

 impiety or atheism might well follow a profession of 

 disbelief, or even scepticism, as to the powers of witches 

 or of evil spirits. A maxim familiar as an utterance of 

 Sir Thomas Browne, " Ubi tres medici duo athei," was, 

 no doubt, in common use in Cardan's time; and he, as a 

 doctor, would consequently be ill-looked upon by the 

 champions of orthodoxy, who would certainly not be 

 conciliated by the fact that he was the friend of Cardinal 

 Morone. This learned and enlightened prelate had 

 been imprisoned by the savage and fanatical Paul IV., 

 on a charge of favouring opinions analogous to Pro- 

 testantism, but Pius IV., the easy-going Milanese juris- 

 consult, turned ecclesiastic, enlarged him by one of the 

 first acts of his Papacy, and restored him to the charge 

 of the diocese of Modena. 



Besides enjoying at Bologna the patronage of princes 

 of the Church like Borromeo and Morone, Cardan found 



1 This opinion prevailed with men of learning far into the next 

 century. Sir Thomas Browne writes : " They that doubt of these, do 

 not only deny them, but spirits ; and are obliquely and upon conse- 

 quence a sect not of infidels, but atheists." Religio Medici, Works, 

 vol. ii. p. 89. 



