Ad te primum igitur venio. Erasmo nel De consolatione di Girolamo Cardano

The article analyzes the influence of Erasmus in the De consolatione (1542), Cardano's first book in philosophy published during his lifetime. Erasmus is first and foremost a moral model for Cardano. Adagia and Moria, are reliable sources for his use of the humanistic tradition. From them Cardano takes examples, dictums, and considerations. Above all, he borrows their rhetorical method to criticize, comfort, and try to convince men living in 'stultitia', deception and illusion. Cardano shares with Erasmus a censure of contemporary society, but he is pessimistic about the possibility of an effective Christian moral reform. The De consolatione already gives us a glimpse of Cardano's awareness of the limits of Erasmus' projects. The De utilitate ex adversis capienda (1561) will make this criticism explicit. At the same time Cardano will clarify the difference of his new point of view from the one he had adopted in the De consolatione.