the most learned men of the sixteenth century was physician to
Lorenzo de' Medici, Duc d'Urbino, Catherine's father. This physician
was called Ruggiero the Elder (Vecchio Ruggier and Roger l'Ancien in the
French authors who have written on alchemy), to distinguish him from his
two sons, Lorenzo Ruggiero, called the Great by cabalistic writers, and
Cosmo Ruggiero, Catherine's astrologer, also called Roger by several
French historians. In France it was the custom to pronounce the name
in general as Ruggieri. Ruggiero the elder was so highly valued by the
Medici that the two dukes, Cosmo and Lorenzo, stood godfathers to his
two sons. He cast, in concert with the famous mathematician, Basilio,
the horoscope of Catherine's nativity, in his official capacity as
mathematicion, astrologer, and physician to the house of Medici; three
offices which are often confounded.

At the period of which we write the occult sciences were studied with an
ardor that may surprise the incredulous minds of our own age, which is
supremely analytical. Perhaps such minds may find in this historical
sketch the dawn, or rather the germ, of the positive sciences which have
flowered in the nineteenth century, though without the poetic grandeur
given to them by the audacious Seekers of the sixteenth, who, instead
of using them solely for mechanical industries, magnified Art and
fertilized Thought by their means. The protection universally given
to occult science by the sovereigns of those days was justified by the
noble creations of many inventors, who, starting in quest of the Great
Work (the so-called philosophers' stone), attained to astonishing
results. At no period were the sovereigns of the world more eager for
the study of these mysteries. The Fuggers of Augsburg, in whom all
modern Luculluses will recognize their princes, and all bankers their
masters, were gifted with powers of calculation it would be difficult to
surpass. Well, those practical men, who loaned the funds of all Europe
to the sovereigns of the sixteenth century (as deeply in debt as the
kings of the present day), those illustrious guests of Charles V. were
sleeping partners in the crucibles of Paracelsus. At the beginning of
the sixteenth century, Ruggiero the elder was the head of that secret
university from which issued the Cardans, the Nostradamuses, and the
Agrippas (all in their turn physicians of the house of Valois); also the
astronomers, astrologers, and alchemists who su