Amor hereos, Melancholia and Impotence: on a Horoscope by Girolamo Cardiano about his own Life

Resumen

In a lengthy horoscope written about himself Girolamo Cardano, renowned scholar, mathematician, physician, tries to impress on the mind of the reader two salient characteristics of his personality: the profundity of his mind and the overwhelming passionality that tormented him to the point of rendering him impotent for fourteen years. This article explains the “science” behind this “fixation of the imagination”, as erotic obsession was then called.