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Meanwhile Llorente, the historian of the Inquisition, makes no mention of Vesalius having been brought before its tribunal, while he does mention Vesalius's residence at Madrid. Another story is, that he went abroad to escape the bad temper of his wife; another that he wanted to enrich himself.
In the autumn of this same year he resumed his teaching at Pavia, a fact which sanctions the assumption that this luckless seat of learning must have been once more in funds. In the year following, in 1547, there came to him another offer of employment accompanied by terms still more munificent than the Pope's, conveyed through Vesalius and the ambassador of the King of Denmark.
I had no particular reason, that I knew of, to be interested in Vesalius; I merely followed an idle whim, suggested rather by the peculiar shape and position of the folio, than by any solid reason; and this whim did not hurry me out of my lounging mood.
The very day that he set out, Clusius of Arras, then probably the best botanist in the world, arrived at Madrid; and, asking the reason of Vesalius's departure, was told by their fellow-countryman, Charles de Tisnacq, procurator for the affairs of the Netherlands, that Vesalius had gone of his own free will, and with all facilities which Philip could grant him, in performance of a vow which he had made during a dangerous illness.
Whether this second operation of the 7th of May was performed by Vesalius, and whether it was that of which Bloet speaks, is an open question. Olivarez's whole relation is apologetic, written to justify himself and his seven Spanish colleagues, and to prove Vesalius in the wrong. Public opinion, he confesses, had been very fierce against him.
Into this book, however, Vesalius introduced as Bishop Berkeley did not much, and perhaps too much, about himself; and much, though perhaps not too much, about poor old Galen, and his substitution of an ape's inside for that of a human being. The storm which had been long gathering burst upon him.
Then he found he must learn Greek; went off to Paris a second time, and alleviated his poverty there somewhat by becoming tutor to a son of the Viscomte de Turenne. There he met Gonthier of Andernach, who had taught anatomy at Louvain to the great Vesalius, and learned from him to dissect.
But a far more terrible weapon, and one which made Vesalius rage, and it may be for once in his life tremble, was the charge of impiety and heresy. The Inquisition was a very ugly place. It was very easy to get into it, especially for a Netherlander: but not so easy to get out.
Vesalius' translation of Rhazes was probably undertaken because he recognized in him a kindred spirit of original investigation and inquiry, whose work, because it was many centuries old, would command the weight of an authority and at the same time help in the controversy over Galenic questions.
And ever and anon the master turned to his book, as he laid bare the mysteries of the hidden organs; to his precious Vesalius, it might be, or his figures repeated in the multifarious volume of Ambroise Pare; to the Aldine octavo in which Fallopius recorded his fresh observations; or that giant folio of Spigelius just issued from the press of Amsterdam, in which lovely ladies display their viscera with a coquettish grace implying that it is rather a pleasure than otherwise to show the lace-like omentum, and hold up their appendices epiploicae as if they were saying "these are our jewels."
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