Charles Davis May 10, 2017:

Thanks! Please don't imagine that I have Cardano's works at my fingertips. It was very lucky that (a) the 1854 edition is available online and tells us which work the quotation comes from, and (b) that work is also available online (on the wonderful archive.org site).

B D Finch May 10, 2017:

@Charles A masterly demonstration of the need to go back to the source when trying to understand a translated text.

Charles Davis May 10, 2017:

(Continued) "Suffer under" does indeed mean "suffer from": patietur means "he will suffer" and impotentia is ablative, meaning "by reason of impotence".

The same arguments, of course, apply to the preceding words, "have desires and vices growing from desire", which can indeed be read more than one way in isolation. And I agree that "desire" was probably less sexualised in the nineteenth century than it is today. However, once again the Latin source shows that it is sexual. This part reads:
"cupidus, laborabit vitiis circa venerea".

Laborabit means "will be afflicted" ("will labour under" still means this), vitiis means "by vices", and circa venerea means "concerning matters of (sexual) love" (venerea is neuter plural). So in this context, cupidus, which could mean eager/desirous or lecherous, presumably has the latter meaning.

Charles Davis May 10, 2017:

@Barbara I entirely agree with you about the ambiguity of the English text and the need to check the source text. The English is a nineteenth-century translation, published in 1854 in a biography of Girolamo Cardano (Jerome Cardan), of a quotation from a sixteenth-century Latin original by Cardano himself. So out of the possible meanings of the English terms, the only relevant ones are those compatible with the corresponding terms in the Latin source.

As you say, "impotence" can be non-sexual even today, meaning lack of power or ability. The same, of course, was true in 1854. But its meaning in the sexual context has changed. Now it refers only to erectile dysfunction, but then it meant "incapacity of propagation" (Dr Johnson, 1750), "inability to beget" (Webster, 1828). So it conflated sexual impotence in the modern sense with sterility, both of which prevent "propagation". And the Latin text, as I've indicated, shows that it does refer to sexual reproduction here, but to what we now call sterility rather than impotence. Cardano is saying that Edward would be unable to have children, not (necessarily) that he would be unable to have sex.

(Continued in next post)

Tony M May 9, 2017:

@ BDF 'desires and vices' have always been sexualised, though not as exclusively so as today; but was very often a euphemism for excessive libido / perversion / depravity.
As for 'suffer under', this is an archaic alternative to 'suffer from' — I susppose there may be some aanalogy with 'labour under a burden' etc.

Interested to note that the Latin original uses the verb 'patior', clearly linked etymologically with modern FR 'pâtir' with the same meaning: 'to suffer from'.

philgoddard May 9, 2017:

It's Edward The king of England, not Edoardo.

B D Finch May 9, 2017:

Impossible to be sure This text is ambiguous and was not originally written in English, so I think that the only sensible course of action is to refer to the source text, if it survives. The preceding sentence deals with medical issues. This sentence seems to deal with his character:
"As long as he lived he would be constant, rigid, severe, continent, intelligent, a guardian of the right, patient in labour, a rememberer of wrongs and benefits; he would be terrible, and have desires and vices growing from desire, and he would suffer under impotence."

If this were about sexual impotence, then one would expect "he would suffer from impotence", not "he would suffer under impotence". I strongly suspect that it means that he would suffer if he was unable to exercise his (political/diplomatic/military) power.

"Desires and vices" are words that are more sexualised now than they were even as recently as the 19th century, and there is nothing sexual in the preceding text of this sentence.