JEROME CARDAN 229 



when one day a certain Josephus Niger, 1 a distinguished 

 Greek scholar, went to see the patient. Niger, according 

 to Cardan's account, was quite ignorant of medicine, but 

 he was reputed to be a skilled master of magic arts. The 

 woman had a son, a boy about ten years old, and Josephus 

 having handed him a three-cornered crystal, which he 

 had with him, bade the youth secretly to look into it, 

 and then declare, in his mother's hearing, that he could 

 see in the crystal three very terrible demons going on 

 foot. Then, after Josephus had whispered certain other 

 words in the boy's ear, the boy went on to say that he 

 beheld another demon, vastly bigger than the first, 

 riding on horseback and bearing in his hand a three- 

 tined fork. This monster overthrew the other demons, 

 and led them away captive, bound with chains to his 

 saddlebow. After listening to these words the woman 

 rapidly got well, and Cardan, in commenting on the 

 event, declares that she must have been cured either by 

 the agency of the demons or by the force of the imagin- 

 ation, inasmuch as it would be difficult, if not impossible, 

 to invent any other reason of her recovery. 2 In another 

 passage of the De Subtilitate he displays judicious reserve 

 in writing of Demons in general. 3 



During those terrible days, when his son had just died 

 a felon's death, and when he himself was haunted by the 

 real dangers which beset him, and almost maddened by 

 the signs and tokens which seemed to tell of others to 

 come, the belief which Fazio his father had nourished 



1 Cardan alludes to Niger in De Varietate, p. 641 : "Referebat 

 aliquando Josephus Niger harum rerum maxime* peritus, daemonem 

 pueris se sub forma Christ! ostendisse, petiisseque ut adoraretur." 



2 De Subtilitate, p. 530. 



3 " Nolim ego ad trutinam haec sectari, velut Porphyrius, Psellus, 

 Plotinus, Proclus, Jamblicus, qui copiose de his quse non videre, 

 velut historiam natse rei scripserunt." De Subtilitate^ p. 540. 



