CARDANO, Girolamo. De subtilitate libri XXI. Nunc demum recogniti atq[ue] perfecti.

CARDANO, Girolamo. De subtilitate libri XXI. Nunc demum recogniti atq[ue] perfecti. Basel: Ludovicus Lucius. 1554.

Folio. 18th-century vellum over boards, red morocco lettering piece, edges sprinkled blue; pp. [24], 561, [1], woodcut printer’s device to title, woodcut portrait of Cardano on verso of title, bound without two final blanks, numerous in-text woodcut illustrations and diagrams, woodcut initials; extremities very lightly rubbed; light, variable spotting, very light dampstaining to outer lower corner of quire “a”; occasional early marginal annotations, underlining and sidelining in ink.

Second edition, expanded and corrected, of Cardano’s encyclopaedia of sciences, with over one hundred woodcut diagrams and illustrations in the text.

Girolamo Cardano (1501-1576) was a mathematician, physicist, and astrologer from Pavia in northern Italy. A friend of Leonardo da Vinci, he gained fame for his algebraic studies and numerous inventions, including the universal joint, the combination lock, and Cardano’s rings. Arguably his magnum opus, De subtilitate is a vast and audacious encyclopaedia of the “subtle”: those things that elude the senses and pose a challenge to the intellect. A veritable “mine of facts, both real and imaginary” (DSB), the work ranges across an astonishing array of subjects: from cosmology and mechanics to cryptology and demonology. Its twenty-one books cover: 1) matter and its natural motion; 2) the elements; 3) the heavens; 4) light; 5) mixtures and compounds; 6) metals; 7) stones; 8) plants; 9-10) animals; 11-12) humans, their form and temperament; 13) the senses; 14) soul and intellect; 15) “miscellaneous or useless subtleties”; 16) sciences; 17) arts; 18) miracles; 19) demons; 20) angels; 21) God and the universe.

First published in Nuremberg in 1550, De subtilitate was an immediate and controversial success, with further editions issued in Paris and Lyon within the same year. The present second edition – corrected and expanded, and widely regarded as the most complete – followed in 1554; a third edition appeared in 1560, preceded by a French translation by Richard Le Blanc in 1556. The book includes groundbreaking sections on the hydrodynamics of river water, the “new” stars observed by Amerigo Vespucci during his voyages to the Americas (p. 104) and Leonardo’s failed attempts to build a working flying machine (p. 452). It also addresses theological questions, such as the nature of God: “You ask, then, what He is? If I knew, I would be God, for no one knows God … except God alone” (transl., p. 560). Such passages fuelled accusations of heresy and the suspicion of atheism. In 1570, Cardano was arrested by the Inquisition in connection to this and other works (including a horoscope of Christ) deemed irreverent toward the Church, and was compelled to recant. He was later rehabilitated by Pope Gregory XIII.

Adams C-670; See Gliozzi, “Cardano, Gerolamo”, DBI, vol. 19 (1976).

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