Nevertheless the popes of this period were men of relatively high morals in their personal life. Paul III was the greatest of them—that same Alessandro Farnese who had obtained the cardinalate through the effect of his sister’s golden hair upon the spirits of Alexander VI. It is true that Paul had begotten two bastards;9 but this had been an accepted custom in his youth, and Guicciardini could still describe him as “a man adorned with learning, and of unspotted character.”10 He had been trained as a humanist by Pomponius Laetus; his letters rivaled those of Erasmus in the classic elegance of their Latin; he was an accomplished conversationalist, and surrounded himself with capable and distinguished men. However, he was elected probably less for his talents and virtues than for his age and infirmities; he was sixty-six, and the cardinals could reasonable rely upon him to die soon and give them another chance to make bargains and receive more lucrative benefices.11 He held them at bay for fifteen years.
For Rome his pontificate was among the happiest in the history of the city. Under his direction Latino Manetti, his maestro delle strade, drained, leveled, and widened streets, opened up many new public squares, replaced slum houses with handsome dwellings, and so improved one avenue—the Corso—that it became the Champs Elysées of Rome. As a diplomat Paul’s greatest feat was to persuade Charles V and Francis I to a ten years’ truce (1538). He almost achieved a greater aim—a reconciliation of the Church with the Protestants of Germany; but his efforts came too late. He had the courage—so lacking in Clement VII—to call a general council. Under his presidency and with his approval the Council of Trent restated the orthodox faith, reformed many ecclesiastical abuses, restored discipline and morality among the clergy, and shared with the Jesuits in saving the Latin nations for the Roman Church.
Paul’s tragic failure was his nepotism. He gave Camerino to his grandson Ottavio, and he invested his son Pierluigi with Piacenza and Parma. Pierluigi was assassinated by discontented citizens, and Ottavio joined in a conspiracy against his grandfather. Paul lost his love of life, and died two years later of a heart stroke at eighty-three (1549). He was mourned by the Romans as no other pope since Pius II a century before.
II. SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY
In those sciences that did not affect theology Italy continued to make such moderate progress as could come from a nation predominantly disposed to art and literature, and in reaction against an intellect that had discarded conscience. Varoli, Eustachio, and Fallopio, whose names are imbedded in the terminology of modern anatomy, date from this brief age. Niccolò Tartaglia found a way to solve cubic equations; he confided his method to Jerome Cardan (Geronimo Cardano), who published it as his own (1545). Tartaglia challenged him to an algebraic duel, in which each was to propose thirty-one problems to be solved by the other. Cardan accepted, but disdainfully delegated one of his pupils to solve Tartaglia’s problems. The pupil failed, Tartaglia succeeded, but Cardan wrote a strange and fascinating autobiography which has kept his head above the Lethe of time.
It begins with the startling candor that characterizes it to the end:
Although various abortive medicines, as I have heard, were tried in vain, I was born on September 24, 1501…. Since Jupiter was in the ascendant and Venus ruled the horoscope, I was not maimed save in the genitals, so that from my twenty-first to my thirty-first year I was unable to lie with women; and many a time I lamented my fate, envying all other men their good fortune.12
This was only one of his disabilities. He stuttered, suffered all his life from hoarseness and catarrh of the throat, frequently from indigestion, palpitation of the heart, rupture, colic, dysentery, hemorrhoids, gout, itching skin, a cancerous growth on the left nipple, the plague, tertian fever, and “an annual period of sleeplessness lasting about eighty days.” “In 1536 I was overtaken with an extraordinary discharge of urine; and although for nearly forty years I have been afflicted with this trouble, giving from sixty to a hundred ounces in a single day, I live well.”13
Endowed with all this clinical experience, he became a successful physician, cured himself of almost everything except vanity, achieved the reputation of being the most sought-for physician in Italy, and was called as far afield as Scotland to cure an incurable archbishop, whom he cured. At thirty-four he gave public lectures in Milan on mathematics, and at thirty-five on medicine. In 1545, borrowing a title from Raymond Lully, he published a book, Ars magna, wherein he made substantial contributions to algebra—which still speaks of “Cardan’s rule” for solving cubic equations. He was apparently the first to perceive that quadratic equations might have negative roots. With Tartaglia, and long before Descartes, he considered the application of algebra to geometry.14 In De subtilitate rerum (1551) he discussed painting and color; in De rerum varietate (1557) he summarized the physical knowledge of his time; both of these books owed much to Leonardo’s unpublished manuscripts.15 Amid sickness, travels, and devastating tribulations, he wrote 230 books, of which 138 have been printed. Some he had the courage to burn.
He taught medicine in the universities of Pavia and Bologna, but so mingled his science with occultism and braggadocio that he forfeited the respect of his colleagues. He devoted a large volume to the relations between the planets and the human face. He was as expert and absurd as Freud in interpreting dreams, and as firm a believer in guardian angels as Fra Angélico. Yet he named, as the ten greatest intellects in history, men not overwhelmingly Christian: Archimedes, Aristotle, Euclid, Apollonius of Perga, Archytas of Tarentum, al-Khwarizmi, al-Kindi, Gebir, Duns Scotus, and Richard Swineshead—all scientists except Duns. Cardan made a hundred enemies, invited a thousand calumnies, married miserably, and fought unsucessfully to save his eldest son from being executed for poisoning an unfaithful wife. In 1570 he moved to Rome. He was arrested there for debt or heresy or both; but Gregory XIII released and pensioned him.
At seventy-four he wrote De vita propria liber (A Book of My Own Life)— one of three remarkable autobiographies composed in this period in Italy. With almost the garrulousness and fidelity of Montaigne, he analyzes himself—body, mind, character, habits, likes and dislikes, virtues and vices, honors and dishonors, errors and prophecies, illnesses, eccentricities, and dreams. He accuses himself of obstinacy, bitterness, unsociability, hasty judgment, pugnacity, cheating at gambling, vengefulness, and mentions “the debaucheries of the Sardanapalian life I led in the year when I was rector of the University of Padua.”16 He lists “things in which I feel that I have failed”—especially the proper rearing of his sons. But he lists also seventy-three books that mention him; tells of his many successful cures and predictions, and his invincibility in debate. He bemoans the persecutions to which he was subjected, and the hazards “that beset me on account of my unorthodox views.”17 He asks himself, “What animal do I find more treacherous, vile, and deceitful than man?” and offers no reply. But he records many things that give him happiness, including change, food, drink, sailing, music, puppies, cats, continence, and sleep. “Of all ends that man may attain, none seems more worthy or more pleasing than the recognition of truth.”18 His favorite pursuit was medicine, in which he achieved many surprising cures.