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Others accept him as a witness entirely trustworthy, and adopt as a true description of Cardan the paragraphs made up of uncomplimentary adjectives applied by Cardan to himself which Naudé has transferred from the De Vita Propria and the Geniturarum Exempla to his Judicium de Cardano.
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.
On the contrary, after abusing and ridiculing a large portion of his work, Naudé breaks out into almost rhapsodical eulogy about Cardan's contributions to Mathematical science. "Quis negabit librum de Proportionibus dignum esse, qui cum pulcherrimis antiquorum inventis conferatur?
The greater part of Scaliger's criticism was worthless, and the opinion of learned Europe weighed overwhelmingly on Cardan's side. Thuanus, who assuredly did not love him, and Naudé, who positively disliked him, subsequently gave testimony in his favour. He did not follow the example of Erasmus, and let Scaliger's abuse go by in silence, but he took the next wisest course.
Gabriel Naudé was a Doctor of Medicine, and held an appointment at one time as physician in ordinary to Louis XIII. But even as a student he manifested that passion for books which furnished the real occupation of his life. Before taking his degree at Padua he was librarian to Henri de Mesmes, and afterwards to Cardinal Bagni at Rome.
That they should have attached, however, to the memory of a man, who claimed the power of making iron obey him when he told it to become gold, and who wrote such a work as that upon magic, which goes by his name, is not at all surprising. This philosopher, called by Naude, "the zenith and rising sun of all the alchymists," was born at Einsiedeln, near Zurich, in the year 1493.
But in appraising the qualifications of Naudé to act as a judge in this case, it will be necessary to bear in mind the fact that he was in his day a leading exponent of liberal opinions, the author of a treatise exposing the mummeries and sham mysteries of the Rosicrucians, and of an "Apologie pour les Grands Hommes soupçonnez de Magie," and a disbeliever in supernatural manifestations of every kind.
Albumasar, one of the most learned of the Arabs, whose thema natalium is quoted by Roger Bacon in one of his epistles to Clement V., Albertus Magnus, Peter d'Ailly the Cardinal of Cambrai, and Tiberius Russilanus who lived in the time of Leo X., all constructed nativities of Christ, but Cardan makes no mention of these horoscopists, and, according to the view of Naudé, poses as the inventor of this form of impiety, and is consequently guilty of literary dishonesty, a worse sin, in his critics' eyes, than the framing of the horoscope itself.
Cardan might rather be compared with Varro or Theophrastus in classic, and with Erasmus, Pico, Grotius, or Casaubon in modern times. On this point Naudé indulges in something approaching panegyric.
Naudé prepared the catalogue, and persuaded the Cardinal to purchase the whole property by private contract. A few months afterwards the King gave him the State Papers collected by Antoine de Loménie. A great number of printed books were added under Naudé's superintendence, and in a short time the new library was opened to the public.
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