onscious instruments
of the malefic powers, asserting that what evil they wrought came about by
reason of the delusions with which the evil spirits infected the persons
said to be possessed. The devil afflicted his victims directly, and then
threw the suspicion of the evil deed upon some old woman. Wier's book was
condemned and denounced by the clergy--he himself was a Protestant--but
the most serious counterblast against it came from the pen of Jean Bodin,
the illustrious French philosopher and jurist. He held up Wier to
execration as an impious blasphemer, and asserted that the welfare of
Christendom must needs suffer great injury through the dissemination of
doctrines so detestable as those set forth in his book.[218]

Seeing that such a spirit was dominant in the minds of men like Bodin, it
will be evident that a charge of impiety or atheism might well follow a
profession of disbelief, or even scepticism, as to the powers of witches
or of evil spirits. A maxim familiar as an utterance of Sir Thomas Browne,
"Ubi tres medici duo athei," was, no doubt, in common use in Cardan's
time; and he, as a doctor, would consequently be ill-looked upon by the
champions of orthodoxy, who would certainly not be conciliated by the fact
that he was the friend of Cardinal Morone. This learned and enlightened
prelate had been imprisoned by the savage and fanatical Paul IV., on a
charge of favouring opinions analogous to Protestantism, but Pius IV., the
easy-going Milanese jurisconsult, turned ecclesiastic, enlarged him by one
of the first acts of his Papacy, and restored him to the charge of the
diocese of Modena.

Besides enjoying at Bologna the patronage of princes of the Church like
Borromeo and Morone, Cardan found there an old friend in Ludovico
Ferrari, who was at this time lecturing on mathematics. He also received
into his house a new pupil, a Bolognese youth named Rodolfo Sylvestro, who
was destined hereafter to bring as great credit to his teacher's name in
Medicine as Ferrari had already brought thereto in Mathematics. Rodolfo
proved to be one of the most faithful and devoted of friends; he remained
at Bologna as long as Cardan continued to live there, sharing his master's
ill-fortune, and ultimately accompanied him to Rome in 1571. He gives the
names of two other Bolognese students, Giulio Pozzo and Camillo Zanolino,
but of all his surviving pupils he rates Sylvestro as the most gifted.

The records of Cardan's life at thi