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Updated: June 24, 2025
The citations with which his pages bristle proclaim him to be a reader almost as voracious and catholic as Burton; and Naudé, with the watchfulness of the hostile critic in his heart and the bookworm's knowledge in his brain, would have been ready and able to convict him of quoting authors he had not read, if the least handle for this charge should have been given, but no accusation of the kind is preferred.
A pretended magician is recorded by Naudé, as living about this time, named Georgius Sabellicus, who, he says, if loftiness and arrogance of assumption were enough to establish a claim to the possession of supernatural gifts, would beyond all controversy be recognised for a chief and consummate sorcerer.
Veracity was not a common virtue in those days, but Cardan laid claim to it with a display of insistence which was not, perhaps, in the best taste. Over and over again he writes that he never told a lie; a contention which seems to have roused especially the bile of Naudé, and to have spurred him on to make his somewhat clumsy assault on Cardan's veracity.
Naudé in vain petitioned against a decree which had fallen like a thunder-bolt on the 'wonderful work of his life. 'Why will you not save this daughter of mine, this library that is the fairest and best-endowed in the world? Can you permit the public to be deprived of such a precious and useful treasure?
Can you endure that this fair flower, which spreads its perfume through the world, should wither as you hold it in your hands? Naudé spent his own small fortune in ransoming the books on medicine. He had worked hard to persuade Queen Christina to purchase the whole collection; but when it came to the point she only bought a few MSS. which were afterwards returned.
It may be conceded at once that the impression received from a perusal of this criticism is in the main an unfavourable one of Cardan as a man, although Naudé shows himself no niggard of praise when he deals with Cardan's achievements in Medicine and Mathematics.
Some writers have been disposed to treat Naudé as a hide-bound pedant, insensible to the charm of genius, and the last man who ought to be trusted as the valuator of a nature so richly gifted, original, and erratic as was Cardan's. Such critics are content to regard as black anything which Naudé calls white and vice versâ.
Naudé does not neglect to censure Cardan for his maladroit attempts to read the future.
'For positive science we go to Rome or Florence or Naples, and for jurisprudence to Paris or Milan; France supplies us with history; and if we wanted scholastic lore we might go to Spain, or the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. In 1647 the Mazarine Library contained about 45,000 volumes, and Naudé in his joy proclaimed it as the eighth wonder of the world.
On his patron's death he was placed in charge of the great library which Cardinal Barberini was establishing in his palace in the Piazza of the Quattro Fontane. Some part of his time was spent in collecting books for Cardinal Richelieu, who offered Naudé the charge of his library in 1642; but, the Cardinal having died in that year, Naudé transferred his services to Mazarin.
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