for his own advantage and credit,
wherefore he saw no reason why he should disquiet himself; indeed his
attitude of dignified indifference was admirably calculated to win for him
the approval of the learned world by the contrast it furnished to the
raging fury of his adversary.[172]

After the heavy labour of editing and issuing to the world the _De Rerum
Varietate_, and of re-editing the first issue of the _De Subtilitate_,
Cardan might well have given himself a term of rest, but to a man of his
temper, idleness, or even a relaxation of the strain, is usually irksome.
The _De Varietate_ was first printed at Basel in 1553, and, as soon as it
was out of the press, it brought a trouble--not indeed a very serious
one--upon the author. The printer, Petrus of Basel (who must not be
confused with Petreius of Nuremberg) took it upon him to add to Chapter
LXXX of the work some disparaging remarks about the Dominican
brotherhoods, making Cardan responsible for the assertion that they were
rapacious wolves who hunted down reputed witches and despisers of God, not
because of their offences, but because they chanced to be the possessors
of much wealth. Cardan remonstrated at once--he always made it his
practice to keep free from all theological wrangling,--but Petrus treated
the whole question with ridicule,[173] and it does not seem that Cardan
could have had any very strong feeling in the matter, for the obnoxious
passage is retained in the editions of 1556 and 1557. The religious
authorities were however fully justified in assuming that the presence of
such a passage in the pages of a book so widely popular as the _De
Varietate_ would necessarily prove a cause of scandal, and give cause to
the enemy to blaspheme. For Reginald Scot, in the eighth chapter of
_Discoverie of Witchcraft_, alludes to the passage in question in the
following terms: "Cardanus writeth that the cause of such credulitie
consisteth in three points: to wit in the imagination of the melancholike,
in the constancie of them that are corrupt therewith, and in the deceipt
of the Judges; who being inquisitors themselves against heretikes and
witches, did both accuse and condemne them, having for their labour the
spoile of their goods. So as these inquisitors added many fables hereunto,
least they should seeme to have doone injurie to the poore wretches, in
condemning and executing them for none offense. But sithens (said he) the
springing up of Luther's sect, thes