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Updated: June 18, 2025
But their consent was only to be gained by the payment of a sum of money entirely beyond Cardan's means, their demand having been stimulated through some foolish boasting of the family wealth by the condemned prisoner. Cardan was powerless to arrest the course of the law, and Gian Battista was executed in prison on the night of April 7, 1560.
As soon as Cardan had determined to withdraw from Pavia he applied to the Cardinal, who had just made a magnificent benefaction to Bologna in the form of the University buildings. He espoused Cardan's interests at once, and most opportunely, for the protection of a powerful personage was almost as needful at Bologna, as the sequel shows, as it would have been at Pavia.
The mathematician who talked about "Cardan's rule" to his pupils was most likely ignorant both of his century and his birthplace.
That there was in Cardan's practice enough of curiosity and independence to provoke suspicion of his orthodoxy in the minds of the leaders of the post-Tridentine revival, is abundantly possible; but there is nothing in all his life and works to show that he was, according to the standard of every age, anything else than a spiritually-minded man.
His citation of the case of the stranger who came with the volume of Apuleius for sale, and of the miraculous gift of classic tongues, has already been referred to; but these may surely be attributed to an exaggerated activity of that particular side of Cardan's imagination which was specially prone to seize upon some figment of the brain, and some imperfectly apprehended sensation of the optic nerve, and fashion from these materials a tale of marvel.
In forming a judgment after a lapse of three and a half centuries as to Cardan's action, while having regard both to the sanctity of an oath at the time in question, and to the altered state of the case between him and Tartaglia consequent on Ludovico Ferrari's discovery, an hypothesis not overstrained in the direction of charity may be advanced to the effect that Cardan might well have deemed he was justified in revealing to the world the rules which Tartaglia had taught him, considering that these isolated rules had been developed by his own study and Ferrari's into a principle by which it would be possible to work a complete revolution in the science of Algebra.
Cardan's reply of March 19, 1539, is friendly too friendly indeed and the wonder is that Tartaglia's suspicions were not aroused by its almost sugary politeness. It begins with an attempt to soften down the asperities of their former correspondence, some abuse of Giovanni Colla, and an apology for the rough words of his last epistle.
I took my departure straightway, conscious of some evil hovering anigh, and full of tears." The above is Cardan's view of the machinations of the statesmen in high places in the English Court during the last months of Edward's life.
Then follows a catalogue of moral offences and defects of character, all taken from Cardan's own confessions, and a pronunciation by Naudé that the man who says he never lies, must be of all liars the greatest; the charge of mendacity being driven home by references to Cardan's alleged miraculous comprehension of the classic tongues in a single night, and his pretended knowledge of a cure for phthisis.
In the following year Cardan's daughter Chiara, who seems to have been a virtuous and well-conducted girl, was married to Bartolomeo Sacco, a young Milanese gentleman of good family, a match which proved to be fortunate. Cardan had now reached that summit of fame against which the shafts of jealousy will always be directed.
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