chapter xxxvi

., Cardan records how on October 1, 1576, he set to work to make his last will and testament, wherefore if credit is to be given to his version rather than to that of De Thou, he was alive and active some days after the date of his death as fixed by the chronicler. In cases where the record of an event of his early life given in the _De Vita Propria_ differs from an account of the same in some contemporary writing, the testimony of the _De Vita Propria_ may justly be put aside; but in this instance he was writing of something which could only have happened a few days past, and the balance of probability is that he was right and De Thou wrong. Bayle notices this discrepancy, and in the same paragraph taxes De Thou with a mistake of which he is innocent. He states that De Thou placed the date of Cardan's death in 1575, whereas the excerpt cited above runs: "Thuanus ad annum MDLXXVI., p. 136, lib. lxii. tom. 4. Romæ magni nominis sive Mathematicus, sive Medicus Hieronymus Cardanus Mediol. natus hoc anno itidem obiit."

No mention is made of the disease to which Cardan finally succumbed. Had his frame not been of the strongest and most wiry, it must have gone to pieces long before through the havoc wrought by the severe and continuous series of ailments with which it was afflicted; so it seems permissible to assume that he died of natural decay. His body was interred in the church of Sant Andrea at Rome, and was subsequently transferred to Milan to be deposited finally under the stone which covered the bones of his father in the church of San Marco. This tomb, which Jerome had erected after Fazio's death, bore the following inscription:

FACIO CARDANO

1.C.

Mors fuit id quod vixi: vitam mors dedit ipsa, Mens æterna manet, gloria tuta quies.

Obiit anno MDXXIV. IV. Kalend. Sept. anno Ætatis LXXX. Hieronymus Cardanus Medicus Parenti posterisque V.P.[247]

FOOTNOTES:

[239] "Qua causa permotus sim ad scribendum, superius intellexisse te existimo, quippe somnio monitus, inde bis, terque, ac quater, ac pluries, ut alias testatus sum; sed et desiderio perpetuandi nominis. Bis autem magnam copiam ac numerum eorum perdidi; primum circa XXXVII annum, cum circiter IX. libros exussi, quod vanos ac nullius utilitatis futuros esse intelligerem; anno autem MDLXXIII alios CXX libros, cum jam calamitas illa cessasset cremavi."--_De Vita Propria_, ch. xlv. pp. 174, 175.

[240] _Opera_, tom. i. p. 122.

[241] _De Vita Propria_, p. 232.

[242] _Opera_, tom. i. p. 639. In the _De Varietate_ he says that natural causes may in most cases be found for seeming marvels. "Ecce auditur strepitus in domo, potest esse mus, felis, ericius, aut quod tigna subsidant blatta."--p. 624.

[243] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xli. p. 152.

[244] _De Vita Propria_, chapter xlii ., _passim_.

[245] _Ibid.,_ p. 66.

[246] _Opera_, tom. i. p. 339.

[247] Tomasinus, _Gymnasium Patavinum_.

##