Re-Examining Culianu: Cardano, the Roman Inquisition, and the Power of Spirits

Girolamo Cardano writes of how people can find themselves in love against their will: if we imagine something beautiful, we cannot withhold our love. Hence, when a beautiful form enters the imagination, the will can be submitted through the inflammation of medical spirits (Cardano then goes on to discuss the vagaries of erectile disfunction). In 1570, the Roman Inquisition put Cardano on trial and began compiling censor reports on his works. The above passage did not go unnoticed. A prominent censor identified it as heretical, saying that the will was not necessarily carried toward anything, however beautiful, except God when He was clearly seen. Only God, it seems, has the true power of the beloved. Above, there emerge a number of themes stressed by Culianu in his examination of Ficino, Bruno, and the repression of fantasy during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. In my talk, I would like both to extend and criticize that reading by applying it to Cardano, showing how his natural philosophy offers a highly naturalized, medicalized reception of Ficino, one very different from Bruno’s. Here, the question of managing desire and its effects becomes an issue of understanding how elemental substances circulate through nature and the human body. I will then suggest that Cardano’s Inquisition trial can help us better understand the Reformation and Counter-Reformation’s opposition to techniques of imagination. This opposition was not due to a denigration of nature, as Culianu believed, but instead to a reaffirmation of divine providence over nature.