### CARDANO, Girolamo
Physician and philosopher, born in Pavia on 24 September 1501, died in Rome on 21 September 1576. A typical representative of the versatility and curiosity of the Italian spirit of the sixteenth century. He concerned himself with mathematics, astrology, astronomy, physics, medicine, music, politics, philosophy, often divining new truths, often also bordering on charlatanism or skirting heterodoxy, particularly Averroism, which he had encountered in Padua. Notable were his contributions to algebra and his philosophical-political conceptions. To him, in part, is owed the formula for solving cubic equations that still bears his name today, as well as the method for numerical resolution of equations. His essentially scientific training influenced and was reflected in his philosophical system, which stood between Aristotelianism and naturalism. His effort, however,
**CARDANO, GIROLAMO** – Portrait.
Copper engraving from the 16th century, after a contemporary original.
to explain phenomena through natural causality was vitiated by his frequent recourse to astrology. This experimentalism C. sought to apply also in political doctrine. He wished every utopian and a priori systematization of society to be banished: man must be studied in himself, in his nature, in his historical evolution peculiar to individual peoples; and according to their differing characteristics, the forms of government and the laws promulgated must be established. In psychology, original was his theory of pleasure: the pleasant is savored all the more the more unpleasant what precedes it, and vice versa; thus harmony is felt more keenly after dissonance, sweetness after bitterness. It is therefore necessary to seek out, as far as possible, motives of suffering in order to savor, upon their cessation, a more refined pleasure. If credence is given to his autobiographical confessions, C. would have practiced this new form of Epicureanism.
**Works:** *Hieronymi Cardani Mediolanensis philosophi et medici celeberrimi opera omnia* ed. C. Spon (10 vols., Lyon 1663); among the principal ones: *Ars magna seu de regulis algebraicis* (Nuremberg 1545); *De subtilitate* (Basel 1547); *De vita propria* (ibid. 1542; Italian trans. V. Mantovani, repr. Milan 1922).
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### CARDAVERAZ, Agustín
Spanish Jesuit, born in Hernani (Guipúzcoa) on 28 December 1703, entered the novitiate at Loyola in 1724. After completing his studies and teaching grammar and philosophy for a few years, he spent 31 years in the service of the Loyola house, 19 of them in the ministry of sacred missions in the Basque provinces, and later, when his strength waned, in that of the Spiritual Exercises at Loyola itself. In 1767 he was deported to Italy with the other Spanish Jesuits by order of Charles III and died on 18 October 1770 at Castel San Giovanni near Bologna.
C. enjoyed great renown for the holiness of his life and his lofty gifts of prayer. Already during his theological studies, together with his companion and friend, the Venerable Fr. Bernardo de Hoyos, he was one of the principal apostles of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Spain. He left ascetical writings and devotional books in the Basque language (treatise on the Christian life; considerations for the Spiritual Exercises, etc.), listed in Sommervogel, II, cols. 729–32, or more fully in J. Uriarte–M. Lecina, *Bibl. de escritores de la Comp. de Jesús... de España* (II, Madrid 1930, pp. 98–108).
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