guido giglioni - hermeneutics of divinatio in cardano’s medicine and astrology

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G u i d o G ig l io n i

HERMENEUTICS OF DWINAT10 IN CARDANO’S MEDICINE AND ASTROLOGY*

Girolamo Cardano represents one of the most complex personalities of

the Italian Renaissance. The multi-faceted nature of his thought has been

recently subjected to careful investigation by distinguished historians, so

much so that it is not an exaggeration to speak of a Cardano revival in Re

naissance studies. In 1994 Eckhard Kessler edited a collection of essays

which can be taken as the starting point in this process of reassessment of

Ca rdano ’s work1. In 1999 another collection of essays, edited by Maria-

luisa Baldi and Guido Canziani, has provided further high-standard con tri butions2. To cap it off, two remarkab le monographs recendy published

(Nancy G. Siraisi, The Clock and the Mirror. Girolamo Cardano and Renais-

sance Medicine, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1997; Anthony Graf

ton, Cardano’s Cosmos. The Worlds and Works o f a Renaissance Astrologer, Har

vard University Press, Cambridge (MA) and London, 1999) shed further li

ght on Cardano3. Nevertheless, the richness of Cardano’s world is such

that much remains to be explored. Using a vivid but telling image, An

thony Grafton likens the future students of Cardano’s intellectual legacy to

«caterpillars exploring tiny portions of an enormous flowering garden* (p.

17).Th ree m ain topics can be extracted from the two books published by Si

raisi and Grafton: the centrality of divinatio in Cardano’s intellectual enter

prise, the ph ilosophy of history und er ly ing his medical environm entalism

and astral worldview, and the delicate interplay o f texts and contexts in the

understanding of Cardano’s unsettling personality.

Among the threads which the two books provide us to find our way in

the labyrinth of Cardano’s work, one is represented by his lifelong engage

ment with the divinatory arts. «Medicatio et vaticinatio cognatae sunt inter

sese», said Hippocrates in the pseudepigraphal letters which had a great

* I am particularly grateful to David Marshall for revising the English of thisessay-review.

1. Girolamo Cardano. Philosoph, Naturforscher, Ar& ed. by E. Kessler, Harrasso-witz, Wiesbaden 1994.

2. Girolamo Cardano. Le opere, le fonti, la vita, ed. by M. Baldi and G. Canziani,Angeli, Milano 1999.

3. An article written together by the two authors [Between the Election and My Ho-

pes: Girolamo Cardano and Medical Astrology) is announced as forthcoming in one of

the next issues of «Archimedes*.



Sphaera 231

success during the Renaissance. This statement quoted by Siraisi can well

be used to characterize Card ano’s view on the interrelationship of med icine, astrology and prophecy. As Siraisi points out, the pursuit of forekno

wledge is at the core of Cardano’s interests. We can define Cardano’s in

volvement in the whole range of the interpretative and predictive techni

ques as an hermeneutical enterprise focusing on divinatio. As is well

known, Cardano condensed all that concerns interpretative skill in his no

tion of subtilitas. It takes subtlety whenever one has to master a puzzling si

tuation or to unravel an entangled case, be it an algebraic problem or a

metoposcopic consultation. More specifically, Cardano speaks of conjectu

rales disciplinae to refer to those sciences the main aim of which is to inter

pre t signs (constellations and meteorological phenomena , dream s and vi

sions, lines in palms and foreheads, odors and sounds). All these disciplines require interpretative skills because they have to take into account a

huge amount of details and circumstances (food, humors, age, sex, wea

ther, countries, stars), because they constandy have to cope with unpredic

tability and randomness in explaining the past and fortelling the future,

and because they have to manage data open to diverse readings and capa

ble of yielding countless consequences.

Both Siraisi and Grafton highlight the importance of the art of interpre

tation in Cardano’s work on many levels. After all, Cardano wrote impor

tant commentaries in several fields (medicine, astrology, and oneiromancy

included). In commenting upon ancient textbooks Cardano seems oftenengaged in defining philological criteria of attribution and in identifying

semantical shifts occurred in the translation of relevant medical terms from

the Greek texts. From Grafton’s minute analysis we learn that Cardano

tried hard to restore the technically and quantitatively authentic tradition

of the ancient astrology, expurgating from it the corruptions of the Arabo-

Latin astrological practice. Renaissance anatomy, too, can be viewed as aninterpretative enterprise. As Siraisi emphasizes, Cardano’s interest in ana

tomy was highly dependent on his perception of autopsy as «a technique

of retroactively interpreting signs*. Furthermore, the anatomical practice

still relied on the knowledge of the ancient texts recovered, edited andtranslated by humanist scholars. Anatomy was still largely a descriptive

and literary enterprise, focused on the careful perusal of authoritative texts. Finally, astrology m ay be seen as another instance of interpretative ac

tivity in Cardano’s work. As Grafton righdy argues, the model underlying

Cardano’s astrological agenda is «hermeneutical, not geometrical* (p.

121). For this reason, historians cannot deal with the phenom enon o f astro

logy starting from Popperian assumptions. Astrology was a science of its

own which demanded complex interpretative techniques. In this light, re

trospective analysis cannot be seen as an excuse for covering up mistakes

and failures, but, quite the contrary, it is a standard practice demanded bythe very nature of a discipline in which a totality of external and contin

gent factors constantly falsifies what has been promised by the inexorable



232 Rruniana & Campanelliana

course of the stars. In Cardano’s view, the serious astrologer, being perfec

tly aware of the conjec tural status of his science, far from devising hyp othe

ses ad hoc to readjust the disproved prediction, is forced to reintepret incessantly the data in o rder to have a better understand ing of the situation un

der scrutiny.

More specifically, Siraisi identifies three main areas in the domain of

predictive knowledge: medical prognosis, astrological pred ic tion, and

dream premonition. The medical doctrine of critical days, for instance, is

meant as an astrologically-based view. The analysis of the great planetary

conjunctions is used as a way to shed light on the grand movements ofworld history. Autobiographical accounts, genitures, and dreams are regar

ded as powerful diagnostic resources. In this respect, the different frame

works tha t can be found in C ardano’s work - medical, astrological, divina-tory and historical - com plem ent one other in attemp ting to devise what

Grafton calls a «project of rational prediction* (p. 175). Medicine, astro-

logy, prophecy and history make use of narrative patterns, aim at reliable

predictions and prognoses, an d do not rule out the possibility of revisions,

retrospective explanations and increasingly refined interpretations. Graf

ton shows more than once how the format of the horoscope commentary

represented the narrative embryo of Cardano’s autobiographical project.

Siraisi rightly interprets Cardano’s passion for accumulating «narratives of

experience* as a «tool for understanding both human society over time

and in its physical environment and the health and fortunes of individuals*(p. 195).

Any interpretation is committed to the problem of mediating between

the general rule and the particular instance, an aspect of the broader question of how law and contingency intersect. This relationship always captu

red Cardano’s attention and accounts for his longlife fascination with particulars, in terms of collected data, descriptions of minerals, plants and ani

mals, historical anecdotes, and medical consilia. Once again, interest in

particulars satisfies medical, astro logical and divinatory demands. The

identification of a particular situation - a sick patient, an astral conjun

ction, or a particular position in chess - presupposes an intricate and ever-changing web of factors.

Particulars have a transient and ephemeral status. They share a preca

rious condition with other objects of Cardano’s research like dreams, pre

sages, vaticinal monstra, planetary positions, and combinations of probabi

lity. Th eir fluctuations and evanescent being in the appa rendy messy situa

tion of the sublunar world dem and readiness of mind and sophisticated interpretative skills. As Grafton argues throughout his book, astrology suited

very well Cardano’s capacity for seizing the contingent in the experience

by provid ing «a language for describing the indescribable, the mom entary ,

the felt* (p. 197). Since human experience is made up of a mosaic of mi-nima which, in turn, m ay be further divided to infinity, any success in disci

plines and activities presupposes the ability to master these minima: «isque



Sphaera 233

solus in artibus, in consiliis, in negociis civilibus praestantissimus erit, et ad

summum culmen perveniet, qui haec intelliget, et in opere ipso observare

noverit: quamobrem in quibuslibet eventibus talia minima erunt obser-

vanda*4. Cardano’s obsession with details and particulars inspires Grafton

with an appropriate methodological perspective: to maintain «both a de

tailed, even microscopic investigation of an individual’s mind and envi

ronm ent a nd a w ide-angled survey o f the millennial intellectual traditions

which shaped both* (p. 21).

Siraisi’s book focuses specifically on Cardano’s medicine. Needless to

say, though, her book is also full of references to astrology. And this can no t

be otherw ise in a work on Card ano5. In Cardano’s astral worldview sta rs

and heavens are the source of innumerable effects: cosmological cycles,

astral sympathies, demonic interventions (among which that of his own

guiding genius), human will, blows of fortune, and chance effects. But

astral powers are no t the only causative factor. C limate determ inism, env i

ronm ental influences and dietary customs are also to be taken into accoun t

in order for medical and astrological practice to be successful. Hippocratic

treatises such as Airs Waters Places, Regimen, and Epidemics are originally in

terpreted in connection with Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos in order to provide an

authoritative foundation for a typically medical environmentalism. Car

dano characteristically invoked the «Hippocratic art of Ptolemy* to refer to

the doctrines of critical days an d fetal dev elopm ent - the traditional ways

of linking astrology to m edicine - not to mention the astrologically pro pitious time that a physician had to wait for before a pplying his therapeutical

procedures.

The notion of hermeneutics as divinatio underlies Cardano’s metaphysi

cal views on divine and natural causality, his mathematical interests in

chance an d probability, and his practical concern s in forms of occult causa

tion. The web of events is made up of convergences of chance, knots of

probabilities and appare nt in te rruptions in th e necessary course of natura l

causality. All this entails degrees of certainty, from the unique and unpre

dictable event to the inevitable outcome of a causal chain (hoc quod in ipso

fa ti ordine constitutum esi)h. Concerning occult causes and marvelous effects, Cardano’s position is suggestively examined by Siraisi against the

backgro und of Pomponazzi , Nifo, and Fem el’s theo ries . Cardano was well

4. G. Cardano, De propria vita liber , in Opera omnia, ed. C. Spon, Lugduni, sum- ptibus loannis Antonii Huguetan & Marci Antonii Ravaud, 1663, I, p. 36.

5. On Cardano’s astrology see Germana Ernst’s seminal essay «Veritatis amor duldssimus». Aspetti deWastrologia in Cardano, in Religione, ragione e natura. Ricerche su Tommaso Campanella e il tardo Rinascimento, Angeli, Milano 1991, pp. 191-219 (an

English translation of this essay will appear in a forthcoming volume of «Archime-des»).

6. Somniorum Synesiorum libri, in Opera omnia, V, p. 705.



234 Bruniana & Campanelliana

acquainted with the debates sparked by Pomponazzi’s naturalistic expla

nation of mirabilia in terms of astral influences, imaginatio and occult pro

perties of things, but he did not completely rule out benevolent an d male

volent demons from the dom ain o f nature. The characteristic point in Ca r

dano’s position is his looking at spirits in terms o f genii lavishing predictive

powers an d good dispositions. This does not clash with his accentuated na

turalism. Siraisi summarizes this well: C ardano ’s medical theory c o m b i

ned Galenic rationalism with nondemonic magia naturalis in an astrally go

verned universe* (p. 169).

Grafton’s book is specifically devoted to Cardano’s astrology. The au

thor proves himself very familiar with the technically sophisticated litera

ture of astrology and he is at ease in such a complicated topic as the deve

lopm ent of different traditions of astrology from antiquity to the early m odem period. According to the astrological doctrine of the time, great con

junct ions of planets, processions of equinoxes, an d transits of comets could

determine the fates of kingdoms and the birth and decline of religions.

Take, for instance, the heated astrological debate (in which Cardano, too,

intervened) concerning Luther’s birthday and his horoscope. Here Graf

ton develops W arburg’s pioneering hypothesis concerning the political im

plications of astrology' and the propagandistic use of prophecies in the Re

formation milieu around Luther'. Grafton sets Cardano’s first attempts to

gain credit as an astrologer and prophet in the turbu lent context of the po

litical and religious crisis of the Holy Roman Empire and in the highlycompetitive world of healers and prophets offering varied forms of

prognostication.

Cardano’s involvement in astrology is also investigated by Grafton as a

part of his self-fashioning strategies. In 1538 Cardano published in Milan

two short texts Supplementum almanack and De temporum et motuum erratica

rum restitutione. Grafton reconstructs meticulously the story of how the Li

belli duo brought Cardano «from local obscurity to international fame*.

What is even more interesting is that the book drew the attention of the

theologian A ndreas Osiander, the astronomer G eorg Joach im Rheticus

and the N urem berg pub lisher Johann es Petreius, all acting within the orbitof the Lutheran Reformation. By reprinting Cardano’s Libelli duo with an

enlarged collection of horoscopes of famous men in 1543, Petrius contribu

ted to shape Cardano’s career as an international astrologer. A large part

of Cardano’s astrological success relied on the use of the horoscope as an

original literary genre. Collections of genitures called the attention of a

7. See A. Warburg, HeidnischAntike Weissagung in Wort und Bild zu Luthers Zeiten, Heidelberg 1920; repr. in Gesammelte Schriften, ed. by G. Bing, Leipzig-Berlin 1932.

The book ' Astrologi hallucinate. Stars and the end of the world in Luther’s lime, ed. by P.Zambelli (Walter de Gruyter, Berlin-New York 1986), may be considered as another important development of the same issue.



Sphaera 235

wide and variegated readership (specialists, humanists, and common rea

ders) attracted to the lives and exploits of leading intellectuals, princes, po

pes, and other famous historical figures. Astrological consultations becam e

very fashionable among members of the European elite. The astrologer,

by showing his technical, psychological, medical, and political expertise,

was in possession of a means to secure patronage and establish networks of

connections.

There is a danger, though, in stressing too much the ritualized schemes

of self-advertisement. It is easy to depict Cardano as a picaresque adventu

rer, a stubborn provocateur or a cunning opportunist, but that can be also

the most common way of losing track of such a shifting personality as Car

dano’s. In a sense, it is precisely what Cardano wanted: «illud inter vitia

mea singulare et magnum agnosco, et sequor, ut libentius nil dicam, quam

quod audientibus displiceat: atque in hoc sciens, ac volens persevero»8. If

the historian forgets this crucial hermeneutical clue, he misses the opportu

nity to focus on what really mattered to Cardano. Instead, the historian is

titillated by the pile of wondrous facts and futile anecdotes, by the gossipy

details of his hazardous career as a scholar, by the thrilling vicissitudes of

his awkward apprenticeship as a courtier. Cardano must have known this

very well, if after four centuries readers are still interested in the story of his

impotence, in the memories of his disfunctional family, in his defiant and

unpleasant manners, and in his rodomontades. Being perfecdy aware that

Cardano’s account of his own life is not always «full and frank* and thatlesser revelations are often used to distract the reader (p. 188), Grafton

avoids the above-mentioned risk by carefully unpacking the famous self-

port ra it and showing its composite na ture , made up of blocks of different

materials from different periods of his life. Also in this case, astrology plays

a relevant role: its «intellectual capaciousness*, in Grafton’s words, «ena-

bled Cardano to make his book a partial mirro r of his fractured self* (p.181).

A strong desire for self-expression characterizes every aspect of Cardano’s work, not only in his renowned autobiography. He never misses a

chance to fashion his own reputation as physician, astrologer, mathematician and philosopher. Cardano’s own self-presentation includes his natal

horoscope, the bibliography o f his books, and dream narratives, in a scho

larly histrionism incessandy open to revisions and additions of data. He

also kept rewriting his own health history by periodically recasting his ho

roscope, self-diagnosing diseases, experimenting on his body, and chec

king his lifelong poor health. As Siraisi notices, «Cardano’s narratives

about his health tell a unique story: that of one man’s developing under

standing of his own body through highly personal applications of a com

plex learned tradition* (p. 224). While his Vita remains an outstanding

8. Cardano, De propria vita liber , cit., p. 10.



236 Bruniana & Campanelliana

example of the Renaissance cult of individuality and self-fashioning, Car

dano’s writings as a whole are interspersed with endless references to epi

sodes of his life, professional successes and difficulties, physical ailmentsand oustanding interpretative skills, the whole thing told in a matter-of-fact

style which never betrays any kind of reserve, embarassment or self-pity.

«Nostra autem sine fuco, et non doctura quemquam, sed pura historia con-

tenta, vitam non tumultus habet», as Cardano writes referring to the gene

ral account of his own life9.

Both Siraisi and Grafton’s books are masterly examples of historical

analyses based on the interplay of texts and contexts. A figure like C ar

dano - a ma n both ou tsider and insider in many institutional and profes

sional situations - requires on the p art of the h istorian an ability to move

with agility from text to context and back. Siraisi maintains that the «taskof struggling with the texts and endeavoring as far as possible to explain

the ideas they transmit remains inescapable* (p. 23), but at the same time

she does not ignore that «Cardano’s writings are an exceptionally rich

source o f information a bou t this comp lex m edical world* (p. 17). Referring

to the medical professional context made up of university teaching, medi

cal practice, and publication of learned works, Siraisi singles out the origi

nal feature of Cardano’s career in his being «simultaneoulsy within and

outside the milieu of academic medicine*. Like Paracelsus and Femel, he

represents «a new type of practitioner in some ways emblematic of the

complex interaction - in medicine as in so many other areas of Ren aissance culture —of old and new, academ ic and civic or courtly, elite and po

pular* (p. 12). Siraisi’s fine-grained analysis is extrem ely sens itive to the

delicate question concerning the dialectic of innovation and tradition in

the Renaissance medicine.

The luxuriant garden to which Grafton compare Cardano’s work is the

product of «one of the m ost elus ive personalities of the six teenth century*,

to use Siraisi’s words (p. 18). Never lukewarm or reticent in his writings,

Cardano «was much too idiosyncratic to be typical of anything* (p. 8) and,

when we refer to the ^typically Cardanesque*, it is only to point to that

characteristic blend of queemess, deepness and egotism which distinguishes Cardano’s literary production. Siraisi reminds us that in examining

Cardano’s work one has not to be afraid of being exposed to «shifts», «con-

tradictions* and ^revisions*. Grafton is essentially in agreement with Si

raisi when he says that his first intention in writing the book was to be sur

prised. G rafton’s methodological procedure (which is also a his to rian’s ge

neral frame of mind) to «develop specific analytical question not in ad

vance, but as [he] worked through primary sources* (p. 15) remains un

doubtedly the best way to dev elop a sym pathy for the w orkings of Carda

no’s mind.

9. Cardano, De propria vita liber, cit., p. 1.

guido giglioni - hermeneutics of divinatio in cardano’s medicine and astrology

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