ABSTRACT
Girolamo Cardano (1501-76) inaugurated the early modern vogue for celebrity geniture collections, a form of astrological literature in which famous people from popes and kings to artistic and literary fi gures were subjected to unauthorized astrological analysis.1 His fi rst edition had ten horoscopes (1538), the second 67 (1543), the third 100 (1547).2 The topic of sexual proclivities was of great interest then as now (and in antiquity),3 and some of the genitures involve same-sexual relations, just as astrology extensively treated questions of sex in general.4 Indeed, Cardano’s dedicatory letter for the 1547 edition announced that his collection would treat, among others, pedicators, cinaedi, prostitutes, and adulterers: a statement which would today undoubtedly appear in the publisher’s dustjacket blurb to attract prospective buyers.5 Cardano provides two relevant horoscopes with interpretations: Francesco Filelfo’s and an anonymous effeminate’s.
