ABSTRACT
A writer of insatiable curiosity and far-reaching scope, Girolamo Cardano (150176) became involved in almost every domain of Renaissance learning. He left his characteristic mark in such diverse disciplines as mathematics, astrology, medicine, physiognomy, and oneiromancy. Also an author of a lost treatise on lovesickness, he sometimes comments on male same-sex love in his scientifi c and philosophical oeuvre, insisting on its moral defi ciencies, but says almost nothing about its female counterpart.1 Especially when dealing with music he refers, not so infrequently and not so obliquely, to the unmentionable loves of male musicians and singers, describing a social environment in which he perceived overt ethical unreliability and sexual depravity. After examining Cardano’s rather bleak representation of love, I will survey most of the relevant loci on sexual love between males in his vast production of scientifi c, ethical, autobiographical, and musical texts (the main exceptions being his commentary on Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos and posthumously published treatise on metoposcopy). In each case, I will focus on his ways of addressing the theme of male same-sex love and forms of manly sociability in the various disciplinary domains that he considered. Cardano offers a number of differing diagnostic descriptions, sometimes attributing such sexual desires to the result of a defi ned physiognomic profi le, an astral inclination, a moral defi ciency of character, or excessive indulgence in esthetic pleasure. In Cardano’s treatment of music, fi nally, male same-sex desires become interlaced with that art, its pleasures, and those of young singers.
