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 figures were subjected to unauthorized astrological analysis. 1 His first 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.
