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 The front cover reproduces a portrait of Kircher at age 62, from
Mundus subterraneus (Item 17).
ATHANASIUS KIRCHER (1602-1680)
JESUIT SCHOLAR

AN EXHIBITION OF HIS WORKS

IN THE HAROLD B. LEE LIBRARY COLLECTIONS
AT BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY

INTRODUCTION AND DESCRIPTIONS

BY
BRIAN L. MERRILL

FRIENDS OF THE BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

PROVO, UTAH
1989
Appreciation is expressed to Chad J. Flake, curator of Special Collections,
for bibliographical assistance and for the liberal use of the Special Collec-
tions; to Robert J. Espinosa, library conservator, for assistance in the binding
descriptions, for coordinating the printing of the plates and illustrations,
and for mounting the exhibition; to photographer William W. Mahler; to
Madison U. Sowell for his help in preparing the manuscript; and to Scott M.
Patrick of the Humanities Publications Center for typesetting the catalogue.

Edited by
A. Dean Larsen
Associate University Librarian

FRIENDS OF THE BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY LIBRARY NEWSLETTER

NUMBER 33, 1989
 Introduction

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of
wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was
the epoch of incredulity." It is difficult not to speak of revolutions in
the superlative, for revolutions are the result of polarization, where
extremes predominate. A revolution, like a plow, turns one extreme
upon another. In the scientific revolution, the soil to be turned was not
a handful of aristocrats, nor even a nation, but rather all mankind. The
way man thinks, what he thinks about, how he acts these were all —
overturned, the old plowed under, the new plowed up. It was the
seventeenth century. Modern man was forging a powerful new scien-
tificmethod and making astonishing advances in every branch of
science. He was also destroying a grand, albeit scientifically errone-
ous, view of the world and of himself. The changes were momentous:
the crystal spheres were shattered; the earth was hurled from its
ancient and exalted throne at the center of the universe into orbit
round a burning ball of gas.

While scientists sought order in this brave new world, orthodox

theologians clung to the order of the old. For them the chaotic world
laid bare by scientific observation was poor exchange for the perfect
beauty and harmony of the ancient world created by reason. The
response of orthodoxy came in the form of the Society of Jesus, or the
Jesuits. The Jesuit order was founded in 1540, just three years before
Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543) heralded the
birth of the revolution. The Jesuits quickly adopted the role of a
"watchdog within science" to protect the old world from collisions
with the new, to offer an "orthodox" science to the world. In the
process, the Society created some of the finest minds in Europe. Fore-
most of these was Athanasius Kircher.
Miq8ev kcxXXlov tj TravTct eukvoa (Nothing is more fair than
to know all things). This phrase of Plato's appears on the title page
of Kircher's work on universal knowledge, the Ars magna sciendi
(Item 22). It could have been Kircher's motto, for the world has rarely
seen one so devoted to knowledge. But in the seventeenth century the
 —

information explosion had already begun. Knowledge was on the

brink of fragmentation when Athanasius Kircher, "the last Renais-
sance man" and "the last of the polymaths," was gathering the ency-
clopedic knowledge he yearned for. Moreover, Kircher's vast learning
was doomed to immediate eclipse by the work of the specialists. When
Kircher took up his position as professor of physics at the Roman
College, Galileo Galilei, a prisoner at Arcetri, was writing his Discorsi
e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno a due nuove scienze (Dialogues Con-
cerning Two New Sciences, 1638). While Kircher was compiling his
enormous Mundus subterraneus (Item 17), Robert Boyle was publish-
ing his Sceptical Chymist (1661). The second edition of Kircher's work
on optics appeared one year before Isaac Newton presented
in 1671,
his New Theory of Light and Colour to the Royal Society of London.
Seven years after Kircher published his work on plagues, Scrutinium
pestis physico-medicum (Item 15), Robert Hooke's Micrographia (1665)

completely changed the science of microbiology. It was impossible for

a Jesuit in Rome to keep pace with such revolutionary discoveries as
were made by the members of the newly founded Royal Society. As a 1

result, Kircher has nearly been forgotten: unjustly forgotten, for he is

at once a prime representative of and an important contributor to the

revolution that has so obscured him.
Kircher was a representative of his times because he was a product
of the three forces that shaped the scientific revolution and gave it its
singular character. First, and foremost, was the Renaissance desire for
—
knowledge not just knowledge in general but universal and encyclo-
pedic knowledge. This desire was moderated by a modern scientific
method, which entailed observation, hypothesis, and experimenta-
tion. The philosophical basis for this method was empirical (we can

know only what we can perceive) and, sometimes, materialistic (what

we cannot perceive does not exist). The desire for knowledge and the
scientific method were, in turn, tempered, and sometimes fired, by

a third force: the orthodox counter-revolution. Its philosophical

roots were medieval and included the supremacy of reason, the
inferiority of matter, the fallibility of the senses, and the infallibility
of divine authority. The Renaissance, the modern, and the medieval
these three converging forces fashioned the revolution. They also
fashioned Athanasius Kircher. He was, on one hand, a Renaissance
man in the highest sense of the word. He was, on the other, an
enlightened observer and experimenter in the mainstream of the
scientific thought of his day. Yet he was also a member of the authori-
tative and dogmatic Society of Jesus. Kircher was indeed a man of his
times, a microcosm of the spirit of the scientific revolution.
Kircher was also a fashioner of his times. The sheer volume of
his work —
some 44 books and over 2,000 extant letters and manu-
scripts —
and the breadth and depth of his knowledge astounded even
the most learned of his colleagues. References to his works are found
in the writings of almost all the great scientists of his day. He was a
friend and correspondent of Sir Robert Moray (16087-75), founder
and first president of the Royal Society of London; Juan Caramuel
(1606-82), Cistercian abbot, co-adjutor bishop of Prague, learned sci-
entist and theologian; Evangelista Torricelli (1608-47), Italian mathe-
matician and physicist, inventor of the mercury barometer; Johannes
Hevelius (1611-87), the astronomer; Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716),
the polymath, philosopher, and mathematician; Giovanni Cassini
(1625-1712), planetary observer; Marcello Malpighi (1628-94), influ-
ential anatomist and discoverer of capillaries;Emmanuel Maignan
(16017-76), physicist; Gottfried Wendelin (1580-1667), astronomer,
physicist, and meteorologist; Robert Boyle (1627-91), physicist, chem-
ist, and one of the founders of the Royal Society; and many others.

Among his students were William Gascoignes (1612-44), the bril-

liant lad from Yorkshire who became a Jesuit, studied at the Roman

College, and went on to discover the micrometer eyepiece for the tele-
scope; Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), the French painter, who studied
perspective under Kircher and later painted a portrait of his tutor;
Marcus Marci (1595-1667), Bohemian physician, physicist, and
mathematician, who came to Rome in 1639 to learn Arabic under
Kircher; and Gaspar Schott (1608-66), whose main contribution to
science was editing the works of his teacher and of other scientists.
Today Kircher's contributions to the scientific revolution are often
overlooked or ignored, but in his own day he was a giant to be
reckoned with.
 '

Amstzlovam I
VffTJ R S TR
Jpwl IOHANNEM IANSZONIUM aWAISBKRCK et Viduaiti F.LIZKI AF.
Anno Mi). C. lxvii.

Engraved title page from China Monumentis (Item 20).

n
 KIRCHER'S LIFE AND WORKS 2

Athanasius Kircher was born on 2 May, the feast of St. Athanasius,

1602, to John Kircher and Anna Gansekin, who, at that time, lived
in the town of Geisa, near Fulda, in what is now West Germany.
Athanasius' father was a devout Catholic. Although a layman, John
had earned, by his administrative and scholarly abilities, the esteemed
position of bailiff of the abbey of Fulda. Johnhad won a doctorate in
philosophy at Mainz and had been an instructor to the Benedictine
monks at Heiligenstadt. He therefore knew the importance of an
education and devoted much of his energy to educating his nine
children. Athanasius, the youngest child, was sent to the local Jesuit
school, where he received a firm foundation in Greek, Latin, and
mathematics. At the same time, his father arranged for him to study
Hebrew under a local rabbi.
Athanasius' youth was not without adventure. One hot summer
day he went with some friends to bathe in the river. Just downstream
from their bathing place the water rushed down a cataract and over a
mill wheel. Athanasius, venturing too near, was swept away by the
current and pulled beneath the wheel. Terrified, he prayed to God for
help and miraculously escaped without injury. On another occasion
he had squirmed his way to the front of a crowd of bystanders at the
annual horse race. As the horses approached, the crowd surged for-
ward, throwing the young Athanasius into the horses' path. The
crowd screamed at the riders to stop, but it was too late, and Kircher,
who had curled up into a tiny ball, was lost in a flurry of dust and
hooves. Everyone thought he was dead, but to their amazement, he
stood up unharmed.
Kircher's father transferred him to the Jesuit school at Fulda in
1614. There he resolved tobecome a Jesuit. His application to the Jesuit
college at Mainz was refused. Apparently he was not yet as devoted to
his studies as a young man entering his novitiate was expected to be.
During the particularly severe winter of 1617 he spent much of his
time skating on the frozen rivers. One day, in a moment of youthful
bravado, he suffered a hernia. Shortly after that, because of long
exposure to the cold, severe chilblains appeared on his legs and began
to fester.The sores worsened, but fearing that he would be refused
entrance to the order if his condition were known, he sought no

medical aid and simply prayed for God's help. The next year he
was admitted as a novice to the college at Paderborn. He arrived on
2 October 1618 after a torturous journey. Soon the condition of his legs
was discovered; gangrene had already set in, and he was pronounced
incurable. He did not bother to mention the hernia. He and his fellow
novitiates joined in fervent prayer for his recovery. Late one night,
after retiring to a nearby chapel that housed an ancient statue of the
Virgin Mary renowned for its miraculous powers, Kircher fervently
prayed to be cured. Confident that his prayer had been heard and that
he would be healed, he retired to bed. According to his own account,
when he awoke in the morning, his legs were completely healed, and
his hernia was gone.
The two years of his novitiate passed without further incident, and
in 1620 Kircher took his vows. He was unable to continue his studies at
Paderborn for long, though; the Thirty Years War (1618-48) was about
to burst upon Germany. In 1621 Duke Christian of Brunswick, admin-
istrator of the secularized bishopric of Halberstadt, moved his merce-
naries into the diocese of Paderborn. Duke Christianwas known for
his hatred of Catholics and for his cruelty. On 23 January 1622 the
Jesuits of the collegewere ordered to flee. A few were caught, beaten,
and imprisoned by a mob that had surrounded the college. Kircher
and two companions managed to escape and make their way through
the bitter cold and drifted snow to the Jesuit college at Munster. After
eight days of recuperation, they continued their journey toward
Cologne.
A two-day walk from Munster brought them to the Rhine near
Diisseldorf The river was frozen over, so they asked the local peasants
.

where the ice was safe to cross. They were shown a path that had really
not been tested. When Kircher set out ahead of the others, the ice split
between them, and the piece Kircher was on was swept down river,
bearing him out of sight of his companions. A few miles downstream
the floe struck an ice jam, and Kircher clambered over the fractured ice
nearer to shore. But a stretch of water about twenty yards across lay
between him and the bank. His only choice was to dive in and try to

vui
Engraved title page from Magnes sive de arte magnetica (Item 4).

IX
swim. Half frozen, severely battered, and weighted down by his
drenched cassock, he managed to reach shallow water and stagger up
the bank. Another three hours brought him to the Jesuit college at
Neuss where he was greeted with overwhelming joy by his two
companions, who were certain that he had perished. Three days later
he had fully recuperated, and the novices completed their journey to
Cologne.
At Cologne Kircher finished his degree in philosophy and, in 1623,
was transferredto Coblenz to review his studies in the humanities and
to teach Greek at the Jesuit college. His extraordinary abilities soon
aroused envy among the other professors. In order to avoid trouble,
his superiors transferred him to the college at Heiligenstadt in
Saxony. The path to Heiligenstadt passed through war-torn Germany,
and no Catholics, especially Jesuits, were safe inside the now fanati-
cally Protestant country. Kircher was warned to travel in disguise. But
being of a stubborn and single-minded character, he refused, saying
that he would rather die in his cassock than make it through safely in
lay clothes. He nearly got his wish. When he reached the territory
around Fulda, which was at the time occupied by the Duke of
Brunswick and his vicious mercenaries, he was waylaid by a band of
horsemen, stripped, beaten, and dragged between two horses to a tree
chosen for his gallows. One of the soldiers, however, impressed by
Kircher's quiet demeanor and long-suffering, pleaded for the life of
the young Jesuit. The horsemen capitulated and rode off, leaving
Kircher's clothes and books behind. While Kircher was dressing, the
soldier returned, apologized profusely, gave Kircher money, and
urged him to leave the territory as quickly as possible. Kircher arrived
in Heiligenstadt two days later.
Kircher was appointed grammaticus, or teacher of grammar, but
soon he began to teach classes in mathematics, Hebrew, and Syriac.
On one occasion he was assigned to prepare the reception and enter-
tainment for legates sent by the elector-archbishop of Mainz. Kircher
designed a display of large-scale optical illusions and fireworks. It
astounded the legates and so frightened some of the simpler minds in
the audience that some accused him of witchcraft, and he was obliged
to explain the workings of the exhibits to everyone's satisfaction.
 —

When the legates returned to Mainz with their account of this gifted
young Jesuit, the archbishop was determined to have him in his court.
Kircher was subsequently called to the archbishop's residence in
Aschaffenburg. There he was occupied mainly with making fireworks
and other curiosities for the archbishop, preparing a survey of the
archbishop's principality, and working on his own first book, the
Ars magnesia (Item 1). Only a few months after Kircher arrived,
the archbishop died. Kircher went to the college at Mainz, where he
took up the study of theology. True to his nature, he did not confine
himself to theology, and on 25 April 1625 he acquired a telescope
through which he examined the then controversial sunspots. From
that day forward one of Kircher's chief interests was astronomy.
In 1628 Kircher was ordained a Jesuit priest and entered his
tertianship — the third period of probation before taking final vows, a
period devoted to spiritual matters and preparation for the ministry
at Speier. One day he was asked to retrieve a book from the college
library. As he browsed through the stacks in search of the book, he
stumbled upon a volume containing illustrations of ancient Egyptian
hieroglyphics taken from obelisks erected by Pope Sixtus V in Rome.
Kircher was fascinated by the mysterious and, as yet, undeciphered
symbols. He was determined to be the one to discover their meaning,
a pursuit that would continue throughout his life.
A year later, his tertianship completed, Kircher was sent to
Wiirzburg, where he took up a position teaching mathematics, Syriac,
Hebrew, and moral philosophy. Doubtless Kircher felt it was not time
to settle down; his curiosity and love of adventure would not allow it.
In 1630 he petitioned the superior general of the Order to send him as
a missionary to China, the mysterious and highly civilized empire that
had, just a few decades before, opened its doors to well-educated
Jesuit missionaries. His petition was denied. He continued to teach
and research, and, in 1631, he published his Ars magnesia (Item 1).
The year 1631 did not pass without adventure. One stormy night
Kircher was awakened by a noise. He noticed a faint light shining
through his window, jumped out of bed, and rushed to see what it
was. He was astounded to find armed men drilling in the courtyard.
He ran to a neighbor's room but found him and everyone else sound
 s

The emperor of China.

From China monumentis (Item 20).
 A Chinese lady.
From China monumentis (Item 20).
asleep. Fearing that he was window again.
hallucinating, he ran to the
The soldiers were still He finally roused someone to witness the
there.
sight, but when he got back to the window the armed men were gone.
Kircher considered the experience an omen. In fact, within the year,
Gustav Adolph, the warrior-king of Sweden, invaded Franconia.
Wurzburg was without protection, and the storm came so quickly that
Kircher and his fellow Jesuits had to leave all their possessions behind
in their flight—for the Protestant Swedes showed no mercy to Jesuits.
Kircher fled to France with his friend and disciple Gaspar Schott,
once and for all leaving Germany behind. He took up residence in
Avignon, teaching the usual range of subjects at the Jesuit college. His
teaching load must not have been too great, for he spent much of his
time traveling around the region of Marseilles studying its antiquities
and geography, trying to decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and
making astronomical observations; he even designed an ingenious
planetarium. The results of his work in astronomy were published in
his second book, the Primitiae gnomonicae catoptricae (Item 2).
Naturally, the period in Avignon could not be without adventure.
One day Kircher's curiosity drew him too close to a new horse-drawn
irrigation pump recently set up in the college gardens. He became
trapped between the drive arm and a retaining wall and was about to
be crushed when the horses miraculously stopped, allowing Kircher
to scramble to safety.
Kircher's short stay in the relatively peaceful and cosmopolitan
Avignon was a major turning point, for while there he was formally
introduced into the scientific community. In the early seventeenth
century the "scientific journal" was in its infancy. Scientists were still

duplicating work already done by others and were consequently

wasting valuable time and energy. Near the turn of the century,
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), in his New Atlantis (printed post-
humously in 1627), had sketched out the ideal scientific community,
where the exchange of ideas and the division of labor eliminated
duplication, thus accelerating the rate of scientific discovery. Bacon's
ideal was soon realized. Its first manifestation came in the mid-
seventeenth century in the form of a handful of letter-writers styled
the "philosophical merchants." Their self-appointed task was to
Engraved title page from tome 2 from Ars Magna Sciendi (Item 22).

XV
become acquainted, by correspondence at least, with as many
scientists as possible throughout Europe, to gather information, and
to redistribute it through their letters. The first of these writers was
Henry Oldenburg (1618-77), the secretary of the Royal Society of
London. In France the most prominent "philosophical merchants"
were the physicist and correspondent Marin Mersenne (1588-1648), a
friar of the Franciscan convent in the Place Royale in Paris, and

Nicolas Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580-1637). Peiresc, a wealthy aristo-

crat and councillor of the Parliament of Aix, was also an avid patron
of scholarship and the sciences. News of Kircher's work in Egyptian
hieroglyphics reached Peiresc, who, in 1633, invited Kircher to come
to Aix to work on several Egyptian papyri that had been given to
Peiresc by Father Minucius, a missionary in Egypt and the Levant.
Peiresc, impressed with Kircher's work, was certain he had found the
man to decipher the mysterious writings. Through Peiresc, Kircher
made the acquaintance of the distinguished scientist and expounder
of the atomic theory of matter Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655), himself a
beneficiary of Peiresc's patronage. Kircher also took up correspon-
dence with Christopher Scheiner (1573-1650), the Jesuit astronomer
who, at the time, held a position at the Roman College. Johannes
Hevelius (1611-87), the Danzig astronomer, in the course of his travels
about Europe, had visited Kircher in Avignon in 1632.
Kircher's stay inAvignon ended abruptly in 1633, when he
received a letter from the superior general of the Order telling him to
go to Vienna to fill the position of "Mathematician to the Emperor at
the Court of Vienna." When Peiresc heard the news, he sent letters to
his friend Cardinal Francis Barberini and to Pope Urban VIII asking
them to countermand the order. Peiresc feared that the move would
upset plans for deciphering the hieroglyphics.
Meanwhile, Kircher had obediently set out on the long journey to
Vienna with a few Jesuit companions. The route through Germany
was suicide for a Jesuit, especially for one traveling to the emperor's
court, so they decided to take a ship from Marseilles to Genoa, and
from there to travel through northern Italy into Austria. At Marseilles
they paid the captain of a small bark to give them passage, but en route
they were waylaid by bad weather, and the captain dropped anchor
in the lee of a small island to wait out the gale. Kircher and his
companions were miserably seasick and eagerly accepted a ride to
shore. While they slept off their exhaustion on the beach, the captain,
enriched by their passage money and their possessions, weighed
anchor and left them stranded on the desert island. Later that day the
hapless Jesuits managed to hail a fishing boat and, on promising a
generous reward, were hauled back to Marseilles.
After a time they were able to raise the money and supplies to set
—
out again this time on a reputable ship. But it was mid-September, a
season when few sailors venture into the Mediterranean for fear of the
violent storms. For three days the ship held up in a sheltered cove.
Finally the captain decided to risk the high seas. On 16 September they
pushed out. The tempest became more violent as the day passed, and
passengers and crew alike prayed fervently to the Virgin Mary, prom-
ising to make a pilgrimage to her shrine at Loreto if she saved them.
Conditions only grew worse as darkness fell. The captain decided to
make a desperate attempt to reach a natural cavern tunneled out
beneath the rocky mountain of a small island. The entrance was not
much larger than the boat and was completely hidden each time a
wave struck. As they neared the cave's mouth the captain swung the
bow forward, and the ship was hurled with blinding speed into
the cavern, barely scraping through the entrance.
Next day, while the sailors repaired the damaged vessel, Kircher
and his companions decided they had had enough of the sea for a
while and set out to climb the treacherous cliffs to the top of the
mountain. From there they made their way over the difficult terrain to
a tiny harbor town on the other side of the island. They met their ship
on the following day and after a few hours landed at Genoa. After two
weeks of recuperation they embarked again on another ship to Loreto,
determined to fulfill their promise. But again a gale blew them
off course, and they were forced to lay up on the island of Corsica.
When they put to sea again, another storm blew them southeast and
deposited them in Civitavecchia, the main port of Rome.
Kircher's unintended arrival in Rome proved providential, for
when he had walked the 40 miles from Civitavecchia to visit the
Eternal City, to his amazement he found that he was expected.
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Engraved title page from Primitiax gnomonicae catoptricz (Item 2).

XVlll
Engraved title page from Musurgia universalis (Item 8).

XIX
Peiresc's entreaties had been effective. Cardinal Francis Barberini had
secured Kircher the chair of mathematics at the Roman College, while
its current occupant, the astronomer Christopher Scheiner, was sent to
the emperor's court in Kircher's place.
The Roman College, the center of the Jesuit educational system
and the pattern for all Jesuit colleges throughout the world, had lost
some of its prestige in the scientific community by the time Kircher
took up his position in 1634. Galileo was beginning his second year of
confinement, and the Jesuits were implicated in his trial and persecu-
tion. In 1611, Galileo's Siderius nuncius had impressed the Jesuits at the
College profoundly, and he had been so feted and adored in Rome
that Cardinal Del Monte declared, "Were we still living under the
ancient Republic of Rome, I verily believe that a column would have
been erected on the Capitol in his honour." Galileo was immediately
made a member founded in 1600 as the
of the Accademia dei Lincei,
first scientific mutual admiration between
society in Europe. But the
Galileo and the Jesuits did not last long. By 1616 Galileo had so exac-
erbated the Aristotelian theologians by teaching the Copernican
system in earnest that he was harshly reproved by the Holy Office.
And, in 1632, when his Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi dei mondo
tolemaico e copernicano (Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World
Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican) came off the Landini press,
Urban VIII brought the full weight of the Inquisition to bear on the
now aged Galileo. As it turned out, some of the chief instigators of
Galileo's trial were Jesuits.
Fortunately, this situation had not cooled the friendship between
Kircher and Peiresc, who was an ardent admirer and friend of Galileo.
Peiresc urged Kircher to complete his work on hieroglyphics, and
Kircher happily obliged. He had been studying the Coptic language
and surmised that it was a descendant of the older Egyptian repre-
sented in the hieroglyphs and that it would be the key to their
interpretation. As it turned out, he was right on both counts, but
unfortunately he did not, and could not, go further. Ironically, Kircher
could read Coptic and thought he could read ancient Egyptian, but he
never put the two together, or even made the attempt. Instead,
he maintained the Renaissance conviction that hieroglyphs were
symbolic pictographs, representing the highest theological mysteries.
"I dare say," explains Kircher, "that the hieroglyphic wisdom of the

Egyptians was nothing other than the science of Divinity and of nature
represented by various fables and allegorical depictions of animals
and other natural things" (CEdipus aegyptiacus II.i.40). On this basis,
by 1650, Kircher had developed an elaborate and ingenious system
of interpretation, which he explained in his Obeliscus pamphilius
(Item 9). Egyptian hieroglyphics were destined to remain a mystery
until 1822 when Jean Francois Champollion discovered, with the aid
of the Rosetta stone, that hieroglyphs were actually a phonetic system
of writing and that ancient Egyptian was, indeed, the ancestor of
Coptic.
Kircher's efforts were not fruitless, however. Within 10 years after
arriving at the Roman College, he published two major works on
Coptic and Egyptian: Prodromus coptus sive aegyptiacus (Item 3) and
Lingua aegyptiaca restituta (1643). The Prodromus contained the first

Coptic grammar published in the West, and together these two

books became the basis for Coptic studies into the eighteenth century.
It is not insignificant that the copy of Lingua aegyptiaca restituta in

the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris contains marginal glosses in

Champollion's hand, suggesting Kircher's important, and often
unrecognized, role in the development of the field of Egyptology.
Doubtless the hours spent poring over Coptic manuscripts and
scrutinizing hieroglyphs were at once delightful and tedious to the
curious and restless Kircher. So, in 1637, when asked accompany
to
Frederick of Hesse on his journeys through Italy, up the
Kircher took
assignment with alacrity, hoping to dust the cobwebs from his mind
and gather what interesting scientific observations he could.
Frederick of Hesse was landgrave of the Grand Duchy of Hesse-
Darmstadt, which included Kircher's hometown of Fulda. Frederick
had recently been reconverted to Catholicism, largely through
Kircher's efforts, and was coming to Rome to pay his respects to the
pope and to tour Italy and the neighboring islands.
The company first set out for Sicily, where Kircher seized the
opportunity to test an ancient tradition. Archimedes is said to have set
Roman ships afire in the port of Syracuse by concentrating the
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Kircher describes the custom, most common in Apulia, in southern Italy,

of dancing the Tarantella to cure the tarantulla bite.
From Magnes sive arte magnetica (Item 4).
 VW \\pu I TtjtuJmu '
Tcoiufnuur +11 Vl" Of" '-'
JL i-h.nl
Tiorba Unnnu J/r,'r,ptlK

Fingering guide for Renaissance lutes.

From Musurgia universalis (Item 8).
sun's rays upon them with mirrors. Kircher tried it and apparently
succeeded. He recorded the results of this experiment nine years later
in hisArs magna lucis et umbrae (Item 7).
While sailing back to Italy, the travelers witnessed an eruption
of Aetna and Stromboli; when they arrived at Calabria, the activity
of nearby Vesuvius caused a minor earthquake. These geological
phenomena sparked Kircher's interest in volcanoes, and he resolved
to see Vesuvius up close before leaving southern Italy. Kircher's
natural curiosity and spirit of adventure had certainly not waned, for
he not only climbed the volcano but had himself lowered into the
crater for a closer look.
Kircher did not compile and publish his notes of the journey
through Sicily and when, in 1665, they
Italy until 28 years later,
appeared in a fine and volume of some 800 pages
well-illustrated
entitled Mundus subterraneus (Item 17). In the meantime, upon
returning to Rome, he embarked on the most prolific period of his
career. In the next two decades he published 11 books, including his
two largest, Musurgia universalis (Item 8) and CEdipus aegyptiacus
(Item 10). The latter is the culmination of Kircher's work on Egyptian
hieroglyphics.
Egyptology had again become his chief occupation immediately
after his journeys in Italy. In 1644 newly elected Pope Innocent X,
Giambattista Pamfili, commissioned Kircher to direct the restoration
and erection of an Egyptian obelisk in the Piazza Navona — then part
of the Pamfili family estate. The great baroque sculptor and architect
Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), in collaboration with Kircher,
designed the famous Fountain of the Four Rivers, which surrounds
the obelisk. Kircher issued a work, on the obelisk and its inscriptions in
1650 entitled Obeliscus pamphilius (Item 9). It was not the first nor the
last time that Kircher was called on by the pope to raise a monument.
He had ahand in the restoration of the Barberini obelisk for
Urban and in 1667 he again assisted Bernini in the restoration of
VIII,

an obelisk for Innocent's successor, Alexander VII.

The toppled and broken obelisk had been discovered in a building
excavation in 1666. Alexander VII commissioned Kircher to interpret
the inscriptions on the three visible faces of the obelisk; the fourth
could not be seen until the obelisk was erected. Kircher was in Tivoli at
the time and therefore sent his Giuseppe Petrucci to copy the
assistant
inscriptions. Kircher interpreted the three sides and then, on the basis
of these, constructed a probable inscription for the fourth. According
to Kircher's account, recorded in his Obeliscus aegyptiacus (1666), when
the obelisk was raised, his hypothetical inscription was found to
match exactly found on the fourth side.
that
In 1655, Kircher was commissioned by the pope to design a small
gold obelisk as a gift for Christina of Sweden. This daughter and
successor of Gustav Adolf, the Swedish king who had earlier ravaged
the German countryside and terrorized Jesuits like Kircher, had
been converted to Catholicism and consequently, in 1654, abdicated
the throne of Lutheran Sweden. The following year, Christina, like
Frederick of Hesse before her, traveled to Rome to pay her respects to
the pope. In addition to presenting her with the little obelisk, Kircher
also organized choral numbers and poetic recitations in her honor.
Kircher himself composed the poems in the many languages he had
mastered. The next year he did Christina the further honor of dedicat-
ing his Itinerarium exstaticum (Item 11) to her.
The year 1656 was memorable for Kircher for yet another reason:
the plague returned to Rome. Kircher had not been in Italy in 1630,
when it was struck by the worst outbreak of the bubonic plague since
the fourteenth century. In 1630 many of the towns of Italy lost from
one-third to one-half of their population. Now, 26 years later, it

seemed tobe a repeat of the horror. Within four months 15,000 people
died in Rome alone. Pope Alexander VII personally organized relief
efforts. He built and staffed hospitals and gathered and commissioned
learned men to help the physicians. Although the physicians were no
strangers to this disease that had ravaged Europe in varying degrees
for centuries, there was little they could do.
Kircher was calledupon for his vast knowledge of ancient medi-
cine and plagues. He, like the physicians he advised, spent days on
end, at extreme personal risk, caring for the sick. Kircher was also
commissioned to search for a cure. By examining under a microscope
blood samples of infected patients, he determined that the plague was
caused by microscopic vermiculi, tiny animals in the blood. What he
probably saw was the larger bacteria attracted to the unsterile blood
specimens, not the much smaller plague bacillus. Nevertheless, his
method and theory were significant, for his was the first attempt to
apply microscopy problem of the plague and the first mention
to the
of the germ theory of disease. His book on the subject, the Scrutinium
pestis physico-medicum (Item 15), attracted considerable attention
among the members of the Royal Societywhen, in 1665, the plague
broke out in London. It is probable that later advances in microbiology
and germ theory were, to some extent, the indirect results of Kircher's
work.
The 1660s brought another 10 books to the press, but despite this
prodigious output, Kircher's health was in decline. In 1661 he retired
to Tybur to restore his waning strength and to gather geographic and
through the
historical information for his Latium (Item 23). Setting out
neighboring one day, he came upon an ancient church.
hills

An inscription near the crumbling altar declared that the shrine was
erected by Constantine where Saint Eustachius saw a vision of
the crucified Christ between a stag's antlers and was converted.
Saint Eustachius is alleged to have been a Roman general of the first
century A.D., who, after being thus converted while hunting, refused
to sacrifice to pagan gods during the persecutions under Hadrian
in A.D. 118. He was subsequently burned inside a brazen bull.
Naturally this discovery piqued Kircher's curiosity, and upon
inquiring of the local peasants, he learned that the chapel had been
called the Shrine of Our Lady of Mentorella and was a well-known
place of pilgrimage in antiquity. Kircher remembered the many perils
he had escaped with the Virgin's aid and was determined to restore
the shrine to her honor. When he returned to Rome, he wrote a small
pamphlet, entitled Historia eustachio-mariana (1665), on the history and
sanctity of the shrine and sent copies to his patrons. Soon donations
began to pour in, and the chapel was restored to its ancient splendor
and status as a place of pilgrimage. Every year thereafter at Michael-
mas (29 September), Kircher and other Jesuits welcomed pilgrims to
the shrine.
The volume of Kircher's writing declined gradually with his
health during the last decade of his life. During the 1670s, Kircher
produced only five books. He spent much of his time in spiritual
exercises and caring for pilgrims at Mentorella. By 1678 he was at the
shrine year round. Much of his work during this period was edited
and published by his pupils. On 27 November 1680 Kircher died in
Rome. A throng of friends and admirers made up the procession to
II Gesu, a chapel near the Roman College, where he was buried, but his

heart was carried to Mentorella and entombed beneath the altar of his
beloved shrine.

KIRCHER'S MUSEUM

Kircher, like his contemporary Henry Ashmole, was a collector of

curiosities. He was in at the hub of the Jesuit
an excellent situation,
order, to gather relics, specimens, manuscripts, and any oddities or
rarities his fellow Jesuits brought back to Rome from all parts of the
world. His study overflowed, and scholars visiting Rome would not
think of leaving without visiting Kircher in his study and examining
his collection. In 1678, the Museo Kircheriano was at its peak, with a
new and a printed catalogue. After his death, Kircher's
exhibit hall
museum, like Ashmole's of the same date, began to decline. Filippo
Bonanni restored it in the first decade of the next century and pub-
lished a catalogue, Museum Kircherianum , . . . nuper restitutum, et

auctum, descriptum, et (Rome, 1709), but after

iconibus illustratum
his death more decay set in. Several more catalogues appeared until
1870, when the Italian government confiscated the Jesuit property in
Rome, including the museum. Much of it was integrated into the
Museo Nazionale, but a portion still remains within the walls of the
Roman College.

A NOTE ON DEDICATIONS AND PRIVILEGES

Two considerations affected the dedications and privileges

commonly found in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century books:
patronage and protection. The former was necessary because printing

xxvu
Jackfruit. A tree native to India, and later introduced to
Guangdong Province in south China.
From China Monumentis (Item 20).
was extremely expensive, particularly when a book contained
unusual plates and type fonts. The latter was not a matter of copy-
right —a modern solution to an ancient problem —but a matter of life

and death. The Inquisition was still tactfully to be avoided and the
authorities placated, as the hapless Galileo learned in 1632, when he
failed to obtain the papal privilege of Urban VIII and was subse-
quently hauled before the Inquisitor.
Dedicatory epistles were addressed either to the patron who paid
for the printing of the book or to a political or ecclesiastical authority
who could ensure the book a good reception. Emperors, kings, dukes,
popes, cardinals, and archbishops were all viable subjects of these
obsequious and flattering dedications. Kircher dedicated several of
his works to the popes Urban VIII, Innocent X, and Alexander VII.
But he paid particular attention to the Holy Roman emperors Ferdi-
nand III and Leopold X, since they were Kircher's most consistent and
magnanimous patrons. Sometimes an author dedicated his book to
a nobleman or ecclesiastic in anticipation of his patronage, but the
results were often less than the author expected. Cervantes dedicated
his masterpiece Don Quixote de la Maticha (1605) to the Duke of Bejar,
hoping to win the patronage of the wealthy aristocrat, but no
remuneration ever came of it. Kircher seems never to have had
that problem. The fine plates and illustrations that Kircher's readers
came to expect in his books are proof of opulent patronage.
The term privilege usually refers to a license granted by a nobleman
or ecclesiastical authority to a printer, according him the sole right to
print a particular work or type of work. The English composers
William Byrd and Thomas Tallis, for instance, were granted in 1575
sole right to print music books in England.
In this catalogue privilege refers to the notes appearing at the
beginning of the books and giving the author or printer permission to
print. These privileges were granted sometimes by the person to
whom the book was dedicated, but more commonly by the authority
in whose province book was to be printed. In
or jurisdiction the
Kircher's case, since he was a Jesuit, were almost always
the privileges
issued by the superior general of the Society of Jesus in Rome.
Kircher's privileges were usually followed by the imprimatur (literally
"let it be printed") —a type of privilege including only word and
this
the name of the authority —of the vice gerent and the master of the
Palatine, both of whom were ecclesiastical figures.
The privilege was not legally required and was often a mere
formality, but it could protect the author, and sometimes the printer,
from the disfavor of a disgruntled authority he had failed to recognize.
Being mostly from ecclesiastics, the privileges in Kircher's works
include approbations of the contents and assurances of orthodoxy.
The privileges usually conclude with the formula "We order that this
book be printed, and with our seal we grant our protection." A book
printed under a privilege to either the author or printer usually bears
the formula cum privilegio or superiorum permissu or, if more than one
privilege is included, cum privilegiis on the title page.

KIRCHER'S WORKS IN THE HAROLD B. LEE LIBRARY

Within the past decade there has been a resurgence of interest in

Kircher. His works are becoming more difficult to acquire as demand
increases. It is likely that in the next decade scholars will reevaluate his
contributions to such fields as science, Egyptology, and music. Such a
reevaluation is long overdue.
The Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University has one of
the most significant collections of Kircheriana in the country. The col-
lection reflects the University's commitment to research on the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries. Many departments on campus
emphasize this period in their curricula because of the momentous
transitions taking place at that time in music, religion, politics, litera-
ture, and, of course, science. Kircher's works are an important source
for scholars to gain a full picture of the seventeenth century. But
Kircher is not important only to the student of the seventeenth cen-
tury. Although now superseded by modern scholarship, Kircher's
work in such Egyptology and religion is still a gold mine of
fields as
curiosities and information not found in other sources.
The acquisition of Kircher's Egyptian works is the result of the
University's long-standing interest in Egyptology, evidenced in the
archeological work Fayum and in
currently being carried out in the
the extensive collection of works on Egyptology available in the
library — including the complete set of the magnificent, 23-volume
Description de VEgypte (1809-28), a monumental attempt to describe in
full the ruins of ancient Egypt. The Egyptian collection also includes

the first edition of Champollion's two-volume work on hieroglyphics

Precis du systeme hieroglyphique des anciens Egyptiens (1824).
Kircher's works are especially pertinent to religious studies
because they record the conflict between the age of orthodoxy and the
emerging age of science, a conflict not only between men but within
men. Kircher's works reveal the conflict within himself, between his
dogged tenacity to hold to the orthodox and his insatiable desire for
scientific knowledge, and the compromises he was forced to make.

The contributions of Kircher to a startling variety of fields will

perhaps prove more significant than scholars of the past two centuries
have thought. Given BYU's commitment to and interest in these areas
and the considerable number of Kircher's works included in the
library collections, the University is poised to play a significant role in
the reevaluation of Athanasius Kircher.
 NOTES

was founded in 1660 and incorporated as the Royal Society of

'The Royal Society
London in The fellowship of the Society included the brightest scientific luminar-
1 662.
ies of the century, both in England and on the Continent. The Society succeeded in
turning a band of virtuosi into a cooperative body of scientists.

:
Kircher, in his old age, wrote a fine autobiography which, according to my
sources, was edited and published by H. A. Langenmantel in his collection of Kircher's
letters Fasciculus epistolarum (Augsburg, 1684; 100 pp.). BYU owns a microfilm copy of
this collection, but it contains no autobiography. Perhaps an error has been perpetu-
ated by the many bibliographers who claim that the autobiography is in the collection.
It is possible that they were published separately in the same year. The British
Museum has a copy of the autobiography without a title-page (BM 123, 715). Reilly
mentions a nineteenth-century edition, but I found no other references to such an
edition. The autobiography is the source for all of the major biographies on Kircher.
My biographical sketch is based mainly on P. Conor Reilly's superb biography
Athanasius Kircher S.J.: Master of a Hundred Arts, 1602-1680, Studia Kircheriana,
Schriftenreihe der internationalen Athanasius Kircher Forschungsgesellschaft, Band I
(Wiesbaden: Edizioni del Mondo, 1974). I have also referred to Joscelyn Godwin's
Athanasius Kircher: A Renaissance Man and the Quest for Lost Knowledge (London:
Thames and Hudson, 1979); G. J. Rosenkranz's "Aus dem Leben des Jesuiten Athana-
sius Kircher, 1602-1680," in Zeitschrift fiir vaterldndische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde,
Verein fiir Geschichte und Alterthumskunde Westfalen, ed. G. J. Rosenkranz and
C. J. Geisberg (Miinster: Friedrich Regensberg, 1852), 13:11-76; and The Dictionary of
Scientific Biography, ed. Charles Coulston Gillispie (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
1973).

'Galileo and Christopher Scheiner had been engaged in a controversy seven years
earlier,both claiming to be the first to observe the phenomenon. The orthodox
Aristotelian system insisted that the sun is a perfect, unblemished sphere, like the
other planets, and it was to Galileo's misfortune and glory to have to butt his head
against the monolithic doctrine in his modest but momentous work Sidereus nuncius
(1610). It was, however, probably Johann Fabricius who first observed sunspots and
Christopher Scheiner who wrote the largest work about them, but Galileo was the
first tounderstand their cosmological significance: that they indicate (a) changes on
the sun's surface and (b) its rotation upon an axis.

XXXll
 KIRCHER'S MAJOR WORKS

Ars magnesia. Wiirzburg: Elias Michael Zinck, 1631 (Item 1).

Primitiz gnomonicse catoptrics hoc est horologiographiae novae specularis. Avignon:

J. Piot, 1635 (Item 2).

Prodromus coptus sive aegyptiacus. Rome: S. Congregazione, 1636 (Item 3).

Specula melitensis encyclica. Naples: Secundino Roncagliolo, 1638.

Kircher's description of a cylindrical calculating machine of his own inven-
tion, used to solve calendrical and astronomical problems.

Magnes sive de arte magnetica. Rome: Lodovico Grignani, 1641 (Item 4); 2d ed.,
Cologne: Jodocus Kalcoven, 1643 (Item 5); 3d ed., Rome: Vitale Mascardi,

1654 (Item 6).

Lingua aegyptiaca restituta. Rome: Lodovico Grignani, 1643.

This, Kircher's second major work on the Coptic language, became, together
with the Prodromus (1636), the basis for Coptic studies well into the next
century.

Ars magna lucis et umbrae. Rome: Lodovico Grignani, 1646 (Item 7); 2d ed., Amster-
dam: Johann Jansson, 1671.

Rituale ecclesiae aegyptiacae sive cophtitarum. N.p., 1647.

A translation of the Coptic liturgy.

Musurgia universalis sive ars magna consoni et dissoni. Rome: Lodovico Grignani, 1650
(Item 8); 2d ed., Amsterdam: n.p., 1662.

Obeliscus pamphilius, hoc est, interpretatio nova et hucusque intentata obelisci hieroglyphici.

Rome: Lodovico Grignani, 1650 (Item 9).

CEdipus aegyptiacus, hoc est universalis hieroglyphicae veterum doctrinae temporum iniuria
abolitae instauratio. Rome: Vitale Mascardi, 1652-54 (Item 10).

Itinerarium exstaticum. Rome: 2d ed., Iter exstaticum

Vitale Mascardi, 1656 (Item 11);
kircherianum. Wiirzburg: Johann Andrea Endter, 1660 (Item 12); other
editions: Iter exstaticum cceleste. Wiirzburg: Johann Andrea Endter, 1671;
Exstaticum cxleste, interlocutoribus Cosmiele et Theodidacto. Tyrnau: Fridericus

Gall, 1729; Itinerarii exstatici. Kaschau: Academia Soc. Jesu, 1753.

Iter extaticumII. Rome: Vitale Mascardi, 1657 (Item 13); 2d ed., Wiirzburg: Johann

Andrea Endter, 1660 (Item 14); other editions: Tyrnau: Fridericus Gall, 1729;
Kaschau: Academia Soc. Jesu, 1753.
Each of these editions is bound with the corresponding edition of Iter
exstaticum I.

XXXlll
Scrutinium physico-medicum contagiosa? luis, qua: pestis dicitur. Rome: Vitale Mascardi,

1658 (Item 2d ed., Leipzig: Johannes Baverus, 1659; other editions:

15);

Leipzig: Johannes Baverus, 1671; idem, 1674; Scrutinium pestis physico-

medicum publico commodo recusum. Graeci: Widmanstad, 1740; Dutch
translation, Rottterdam: Abraham van Waesberge, 1669; German transla-
tion, Augsburg: J. C. Brandan, 1680.

Pantometrum kirchcrianum, hoc est, instrumentum geometricum novum a celeberrimo viro

P. Athanasio Kirchero antehac invention. Wiirzburg: Jobus Hertz, 1660; 2d ed.,
Wiirzburg: Jobus Hertz, 1669.
On a geometrical instrument invented by Kircher.

Diatribe de prodigiosis crucibus. Rome: Vitale Mascardi, 1661 (Item 16); 2d ed., Rome:
Blasius Deversus, 1666 (?); included in Gaspar Schott's joco-seriorum naturae
et artis (Wiirzburg: n.p., 1666) and later translated into German with that
work.

Polygraphia nova et universalis, ex combinatoria arte detecta. Rome: Varese, 1663; 2d ed.,
Amsterdam: n.p., 1680.

Kircher's treatise on a universal language of his own invention.

Mundus subterraneus. Amsterdam: Johann Jansson, 1665 (Item 17); 2d ed., Amster-
dam: Johann Jansson, 1668; Dutch translation, D'Onder-aardse Whereld in
Haar Goddelijk Maaksel en ivonderbare vitzverkselen aller Dingen. Amsterdam:
Johannes Jansson, 1682; English trnaslation, The Vulcano's: or, Burning and
Fire-vomiting Mountains. London: J. Darby, 1669 (Item 18).

Historia eustachio-mariana. Rome: Varese, 1665.

A history of the shrine at Mentorella restored by Kircher in 1665.

Arithmologia sive de abditis numerorum mysteriis. Rome: Varese, 1665 (Item 19).

Obelisci aegyptiaci . . . interpretatio hieroglyphica. Rome: Varese, 1666.

Description and interpretation of Egyptian obelisks found around Rome.

China monumentis . . . illustrata. Rome: Varese, n.d.; 2d ed., Amsterdam: Johann

Jansson, 1667 (Item 20); Antwerp: Jacob Meurs, 1667; French translation,
La Chine d'Athanase Kirchere. Amsterdam: Johann Jansson, 1670.

Magneticum naturae regnum. Rome: Ignazio Lazzari, 1667 (Item 21); 2d ed., Amster-
dam: Johann Jansson, n.d.

Ars magna sciendi. Amsterdam: Johann Jansson, 1669 (Item 22); 2d ed., Amsterdam:
n.p., 1669 (?).

Latium, id est nova et parallela Latii turn veteris, turn novi descriptio. Rome: n.p., 1669;

2d ed., Amsterdam: Johann Jansson, 1671 (Item 23).

Principis christiani archetypon politicum sive sapinetia regnatrix [alternate title: Splendor
domus Joanniae descripta ab Athanasio Kirchero]. Amsterdam: n.p., 1669; 2d ed.,
Amsterdam: Johann Jansson, 1672 (Item 24).
Phonurgia nova $we conjugium mechanico-physicum artis et naturae paranympha phonoso-

phia concinnatum. Kempten: Rudolph Dreherr, 1673 (Item 25); German

translation, Athanasii Kircheri Neue Hall-und Thon-Kunst, oder Mechanische
. . .

Geheimverbindung der Kunst und Nature. Nordlingen: n.p., 1684; Phonugia

nova: A Facsimile of the 1673 Kempten Edition. New York: Broude Brothers,
1966.

Area Noe. Amsterdam: Johann Jansson, 1675 (Item 26).

Sphinx mystagoga, sive diatribe hieroglyphica, qua mumiae •xhibetur interpretatio.

Rome: Vitale Mascardi, 1676 (Item 27).

Tunis Babel, sive archontologia qua prima priscorum post diluvium hominum vita, mores
rerumque gestarum magnitudo . . . describuntur et explicantur. Amsterdam:
Johann Jansson, 1679.
This compilation of Kircher's researches into the biblical account of the
tower of Babel is similar in scope and format to the Area Noe (Item 26).
Kircher speculates about the construction of the tower. He also traces the
migration of the peoples after the confusion of tongues.

Tariffa kircheriana, id est, inventum aucthoris novum. Rome: Nicolo Angelo Tinassi, 1679
(Item 28).

XXXV
Engraved title page from Sphynx mystagoga (Item 27).
 REFERENCES

BM British Museum General Catalogue of Printed

Books. London: ManselL 1959-68.

Brunet Brunet, Jacques-Charles. Manuel du libraire et

de I'amateur de livres. 5th ed. Berlin: Fraenkel,

1921.

Caillet Caillet, Albert L. Manuel bibliographique des

sciences psychiques ou occultes. Paris: Lucien
Dorbon, 1912.

Clendening Athanasius Kircher, 1602-1680: An Exhibition of

Books from History of Medicine Collection.
the
Kansas City: Clendening Medical Library, 1958.

De Backer De Backer, Augustin and Aloys. Bibliotheque des

ecrivains de la compagnie de Jesus, ou notices bibli-

ographiques. Liege: L. Grandmont-Donders,

1853-61.

Garrison /Morton Garrison, Fielding H., and Leslie T. Morton. A

Medical Bibliography. 3d ed. London: Andre
Deutsch, 1970.'

Graesse Gra?sse, Jean G. T. Tresor de livres rares et preckux

ou nouveau dictionnaire bibliographique. Milan:
Gorlich, 1950.

Meibom Meibom, Marcus. Antiquae musicae. Amsterdam:

Ludovicus Elzevirius, 1652.

NUC The National Union Catalog Pre-1956 Imprints.

London: Mansell, 1968-81.

Sommervogel Sommervogel, Carlos, la Com-

ed. Bibliotheque de
pagnie de Jesus. Oscar Schepens,
Bruxelles:
1890-1932. Reprint. Louvain: Editions de la
Bibliotheque S.J., College Philosophique et
Theologique, 1960.

Wing Wing, Donald. Short-title Catalogue of Books

Printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and
British America and of English Books Printed in
Other Countries, 1641-1700. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1951.
 THE ARRANGEMENT OF THE CATALOGUE

The 31 items in this catalogue are arranged in chronological order by

publication date, except when there are two or more editions of the same work,
in which case later editions are described immediately below the earliest
edition. The descriptions include the following:

item number;

quasi-facsimile transcription of the title page with a vertical line I

indicating the end of a line and with the spelling and

punctuation peculiarities that appear in the original;

quasi-facsimile transcription of the colophon, if one is present in

the work;

dimensions of the book's front cover in centimeters and inches

with height given before width;

number of pages, with brackets to indicate when pages are

unnumbered and not counting blank pages except when
they appear between printed pages;

general description of the book, its binding, printing peculiar-

ities, plates and figures, additional title-pages with quasi-
facsimile transcriptions, and the date and significance of
the dedication and privilege;

brief description of the contents of the work, its history, and

significance;

provenance, if known;

references, including author's name, volume number in roman

numerals, and the page or column number followed by
a decimal and an entry number where applicable.
1. ARS MAGNESIA, I Hoc est I DISQVISITIO BIPAR-
TITA- 1 emperica seu experimental^, Physico-Ma- I thematica I

DE NATVRA, VIRI- BVS, ET PRODIGIOSIS EFFE- CTIBVS

I I

MAGNETIS, Quam Cum theorematice, turn problematice

I I

proposi- tarn, nouaque methodo ac apodictica seu demonstra-

I

tiua traditam, variisque vsibus ac diuturna experientia corn-

I

pro- batam, fauente Deo, tuebitur.

I PR/ENOBILIS & I

ERVDITVS JOANNES JACOBVS SVVEIGK-

I D. Urdus a I

Freihausen, Juris & Mathtema- ticse Studiosus. PRESIDE & I I

AVTHORE R. P. ATHANASIO KIRCHER e SOC. IESV Phi-

I I

losophise moralis, disciplinarum mathematicarum, sacrarum-

que linguarum Hebraeae & Syra? in illustri Franciae Orientalis I

Academia Professore Ord. [ornament] HERBIPOLI, Typis I I I

ELI/E MICHAELIS ZINCK. ANNO M. DC. XXXI. [1631] I

20.3 x 14.5 cm. (8 x 5 3/4 in.); [8], 63, |1] pp.

Bound in contemporary calf; gold tooling and lettering on spine; gilt-filleted

covers with gilt armorial stamp of Antoine Coeffier-Ruze d'Effiat; stained edges;
browning paper; headpieces; initials; printed signatures and custodes; numerous
woodcut illustrations.
The work was submitted for publication by Kircher's superior Joannes
Jacobus Sweigkhardus von Freihausen, whose dedicatory epistle to Franciscus,
bishop of Wiirzburg, is dated from Wiirzburg, 25 September 1631.

The Ars magnesia, Kircher's first work, reflects his interest in the
unseen and unexplained forces of nature. The work comprises a series of
experiments and demonstrations of the nature of magnets and the conse-
quent theorems and corollaries explaining magnetic phenomena. Kircher
also speculates on the various uses of magnetism in mechanics and medicine.
He livens the work with several historical anecdotes concerning magnets,
lambasts some ancient superstitions, and concludes by explaining how a
magnet symbolizes the heavenly authority of the Trinity; the earthly author-
ity of emperor, king, and prince; and the ecclesiastical authority of priest,
bishop, and public preacher. Kircher's interest in magnetism continued
throughout his life. He later wrote two larger works on magnetism, Magnes
sive de arte magnetica (Item 4) and Magneticum naturae regnum (Item 21).

BYU's copy of the Ars magnesia is bound third in a collection of five

treatises which includes, in order, Francois Boussuet's De natura aquatilium
carmen (Lyons, 1558), [5], 135 pp., a didactic poem celebrating Guillaume
Rondelet's Libri de piscibns marinis (Lyons, 1554-55); Bernardinus-Joannes
Neydecker Stainer's Gerocomicon, sive diaeteticum regimen, de conser-
vanda senum sanitate (Wiirzburg, 1631), [16], 58, [1] pp., a medical handbook
for the elderly; Kircher's Ars magnesia; a very rare work by Johann Conrad
Gerhard on alchemy and extracting minerals from water, the Tractatus prac-
ticus de chymiatra (n.p., 1631), [32] pp.; and Daniel Winckler's Animadver-
siones in tractatum, qui inscribitur: Dissertatio de vita foetus in utero (Jena,
1630), 88 pp., a response to a treatise by Gregory Nymann, professor of
anatomy at Wittenberg, on the viability of the foetus andits independence

from the mother.

PROVENANCE: Antoine Coeffier-Ruze d'Effiat (1581-1632), protege of

Cardinal Richelieu, superintendent of finance, lieutenant general, and, in 1631,
Marshal of France (gilt armorial stamp on covers); Victor Pelissier de Feligonde, S. J.
(1726-83) (engraved armorial bookplate dated 1743 and inscription on title page).

REFERENCES: Brunet III, 666 "ce n'est certainement pas le moins rare de ses
(

ecrits"); De Backer I, 422.1; Graesse IV, 21; Sommervogel IV, 1046.1.

Kircher's fanciful depiction of the villa of Quinctilius

From Latium (Item 23).
2. PRIMITIVE GNOMONIC/E CATOPTRICS HOC EST
I I

IHOROLOGIOGRAPHI/E NOV/E SPECVLARIS In qua I I

breuiter noua, certa, exacta, & facilis demonstratur horolo- I

giorum per reflexi luminis radium construendorum I metho-

dus; Item qua ratione praedicto reflexi luminis radio, I in
qualibet quantumuis irregulari muri superficie, in inte- I rio-
ribus domorum, aliisque locis obscuris, & vmbrosis, I cum
horologia omnis generis, turn omnium circulorum, I qui in
primo mobili considerari possunt, proiecturae, & cur- I use sec-
torum conorum lineaa, processus solis, & lunae in pla- I nis
indices, aliaque plurima scitu digna repr(a)esentari possint, I

varie docetur. I AVTHORE I R. P. ATHANASIO KIRCHER

BVCHONIO, I e Socieiate IESV. Mathematum, & Orientalium
I linguarum Professore. AVENIONE. I Ex [ornament] I I

Typographia I. PIOT, S. Officij Typographi via Aroma taria. I

M. DC. XXXV. Cum priuilegiis Regis Christmi.ac Rmi. Pro-Vice-

I

legati Auenion. [1635]

23 x 18.5 cm. (91/8x71/4 in.); [12], 228, [16] pp.

Contemporary limp vellum binding; ink title on spine and bottom edges of
leaves; slight damp-stainingand browning; headpieces; initials; printed signatures
and marginal glosses; numerous woodcut illustrations and diagrams, particularly of
sundials; tables.
There is an added engraved title page with the work's alternate title: Horolo-
gium Avert: Astronomico Catoptricum I Soc Iesu in quo totius primi mobilis I motus, refexo
Solis radio I demonstratur I Auctore Athanasio Kircher I e Soc :Iesu I Anno domini 1635 I

AVENIONE, Sumptibus Ioannis Piot.

The work is dedicated to the city council of Avignon and to Claudius
Sylvester, assessor of the city. Kircher's dedicatory epistle is dated from Avignon,
10 May 1633. The preliminary pages include four poetic epigrams to the work.

The Primitiae gnomonicae catoptricae, one of Kircher's earliest and

rarest works, treats the construction and workings of sundials by reflected
light (gnomonicus catoptricus). It is also an astronomical work, dealing with
the motion of the sun and moon. Shortly after Kircher took up residence
in Avignon (1631), he began earnest research in, among other things,
astronomy. He designed an observatory to study the progress of the sun and
moon by reflecting their light with mirrors into the De La Motte tower of
the Jesuit college. This book is the result of his observations and comprises
a series of problems, corollaries, and theorems related to those observations.

REFERENCES: Brunet 668; Clendening 5.1; De Backer I, 422.2 ("Kircher

III,

parai avoir ignore qu'il existait deja un ouvrage du P. George Schcenberger, S. J., sur le
meme sujet"), VII, 285.2; Graesse IV, 22; Sommervogel IV, 1046^7.2 ("La Biogr.
univers. cite une edition de 1633. Existe-t-elle?").

3. ATHANASII KIRCHERI FVLDENSIS BVCHONII E I I

SOC. IESV PRODROMVS COPTVS SIVE ^EGYPTIACVS.

I I I

Ad Eminentiss: Principem S.R.E. Cardinalem FRANCISCVM

I I

BARBERINVM. in quo ICum linguae Coptae, siue I

AEgypiacae, quondam Pharao- nicae, origo, aetas, vicissitudo, I

inclinatio; turn hierogly- I phicae literaturae instauratio, vti per

varia variarum erudi- I tionum, interpretationumque difficilli-

marum specimina, I ita noua quoque & insolita methodo

exhibentur. I [vignette of Christ sending forth his apostles and
quotation from Vulgate, Mark 16:15] I Romae. Typis S.Cong: de
propag: Fide. 1636. 1 Superiorum permissu.

23 x 17.8 cm. (91/8x7 in.); [24], 338, [2] pp.

Contemporary Italian binding of limp vellum; ink title and shelf marks on
spine; browning paper; tailpieces; printed signatures, custodes and marginal glosses;
alphabetic tables and paradigms. Type fonts include Greek, Syriac, Arabic, Hebrew,
Estranghelo, Samaritan, Armenian, Chaldean, Rashi, Amharic, "Saracen," hiero-
—
glyphic, and of course Coptic a tour de force of seventeenth-century typography.
The work is dedicated to Cardinal Francesco Barberini, who was instrumen-
tal in securing Kircher's position at the Roman College. The dedicatory epistle is dated

from Rome, 2 August 1636. The privilege is from Mutius Vitelleschi, superior general,
dated from Rome, 23 April 1635. A second privilege from Melchior Inchofer of the
Society of Jesus is dated 15 June 1636. Within the preliminary pages are several

encomia, or poems, written in honor of Kircher and the work. These were written by
Kircher's fellow linguists in rabbinic Hebrew, biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Ethi-
opic, Arabic, Samaritan, and Armenian, all with Latin translations.

Prodromus coptus sive aegyptiacus, the first Coptic grammar to appear

in the West, was for centuries the basis for Coptic studies, along with
Kircher's later work Lingua aegyptiaca restituta (1643). Kircher had
encountered hieroglyphs during his tertianship (a one-year period of reli-
gious study in preparation for the ministry) in Speier, and he was con-
— —
vinced correctly that Coptic was a late vestige of ancient Egyptian. While
at Avignon he was given several Coptic manuscripts by his friend and patron
Nicolas Claude Fabri de Peiresc. Later in Rome Kircher acquired an
Arabic-Coptic vocabulary brought from Egypt by Pietro della Valle. On
the basis of these, and with Peiresc's encouragement, Kircher compiled the
Prodromus. As the title reveals, it was to be a precursor of a later work on
the Egyptian language, perhaps the Lingua aegyptiaca restituta. In both works
he stresses the importance of Coptic for interpreting hieroglyphics. Because
"things Egyptian" were the rage in seventeenth-century Europe, the
Prodromus attained immediate popularity and firmly established Kircher's
reputation as a scholar.

REFERENCES: Brunet III, 668; Caillet II, 364.5790; Clendening 5.2; De Backer
I, M. Champollion, doit en quelque sorte a Kircher la
422.4 ("L'Europe savante, dit
connaissance de langue copte; et il merite, sous ce rapport, d'autant plus
la

d'indulgence pour ses erreurs nombreuses, que les monuments litteraires des Coptes
etaient plus rares de son temps"); Graesse IV, 22; Sommervogel IV, 1047.3.

WSk

Engraved title page from book 3 of

Magnes sive de arte magnetica (Item 4).
4. ATHANASII I KIRCHERI I FVLDENSIS BVCHONII, E
SOC. IESV. I MAGNES I siue De ARTE MAGNETICA
I

IOPVS TRIPARTITVM I Quo I PR^ETERQVAM QVOD

VNIVERSA MAGNETIS I Natura, eiusque in omnibus Artibus
& Scientijs vsus noua I methodo explicetur, e viribus quoque &
prodigiosis effe- I ctibus Magneticarum, aliarumque abditarum
Naturae motionum in Elementis, Lapidibus, Plantis & Ani-
I I

malibus elucescentium, multa hue- usque incognita Naturae I

arcana per Physica, Medica, Chymica, & Mathematica omnis

I I

ge- neris experimenta

I recluduntur. [title vignette] Sump-I I I

tibus Hermanni Scheus sub signo Reginae. ROMAE, Ex I

Typographia Ludouici Grignani. MDCXLI. SVPERIORVM I

PERMISSV. [1641]

25.5 x 19.3 cm. (10 x 7 5/8 in.); [48], 916, |16] pp.

Bound in contemporary Italian paper; ink title on spine; trimmed edges;

initials; tailpieces; printed signatures, custodes, and marginal glosses; numerous
tables, woodcut and diagrams; 34 full-page woodcuts and engravings,
illustrations
1 fold-out, 1 volvelle to be attached opposite p. 287; printed music; browning paper.
There is an additional engraved title page by the Italian engraver Claudio
Dagli: MAGNES I Siue de I ARTE MAGNETICA I LIBRI TRES I Authore I P.

Athanasio Kirchero I Fuld: Buchonio e Soc: Ies. I AD I Sacratissimum atq. Inuictiss. I

FERDINANDVM III I AVSTRIACVM I Rom: Imperat: I Semper I

Augustum.
Book 3 also has an additional engraved title page: ATHANASII KIRCHERI I

FVLDENSIS BVCHONII SOCIET. IESV MAGNES SIVE DE MAGNETICA ARTE I I

I LIBER TERTIVS Romae sumptibus Hermanni Scheus, sub signo Reginae MDCXLI.
I

G. B. Rinalduci is named as the engraver.

A note at the end of book 3 gives the editing date as 2 May 1641, Kircher's
thirty-ninth birthday. The year of Kircher's birth is noted as 1601. The dedicatory
Emperor Ferdinand III of Austria is dated from Rome, 4 nones of May
epistle to
(4May) 1641. The privilege from Superior General Mutius Vitelleschi is dated from
Rome, 30 November 1639.

Kircher's Magnes second and largest

sive de arte magnetic/* is his
work on magnetism. In 1631 at his Ars magnesiaWurzburg he published
(Item 1), a small book of 63 pages, in which he introduced many of the obser-
vations discussed later in his Magnes and Magneticum naturae regnum
(Item 21). William Gilbert's De magnete (1600), the first thoroughly modern
treatment of magnetism, influenced Kircher considerably. Gilbert's work has
been called the "first classic of modern physics," but, however empirical and
experimental Gilbert's treatise was, he, like Kircher and other scientists of the
day, did not separate magic from science, and magnetism was usually
regarded as a magical force. Kircher adapts Gilbert's theories of magnetism
and Kepler's work in astronomy and does not hesitate to refute either.
Kircher's Magnes is filled with curiosities, both profound and frivo-
lous. The work does not deal solely with what modern physicists call mag-
netism. Kircher discusses, for example, the magnetism of the earth and
heavenly bodies; the tides; the attraction and repulsion in animals and plants;
and the magnetic attraction of music and love. He also explains the practical
applications of magnetism in medicine, hydrolics, and even in the construc-
tion of scientific instruments and toys. In the epilogue Kircher moves from
—
the practical to the metaphysical and Aristotelian when he discusses the —
nature and position of God: "the central magnet of the universe." This work
contains the first use of the term T)\eKTpo- u-a^vinTuxiJios, "electro-magnetism"
(p. 640).

Kircher's Magnes contains all that was known in his day on electricity
and magnetism, even today baffle scientists.
forces that

This copy of Magnes is the first edition. Also in the BYU collections
are the second edition, published at Cologne in 1643, and the third edition,
published in Rome in 1654 (items 5 and 6).

PROVENANCE: "Wolfgang Engelbert von Auersberg, inscribed in his

catalogue 1655" (inscription on added title page); bookplate of the Fuerstlich
Auerspergsche Fideicommisbibliothek zu Laybach.

REFERENCES: Caillet II, 362.5778; De Backer 1, 422-23.5; Gra^sse IV, 21; Som-
mervogel IV, 1048-49.6 ("Entre la p. 524 et 525, il y a 8 ff. d'ind. pour les 2 premiers
livres," but in the BYU copy this index is bound among the preliminary leaves).
5. ATHANASII I KIRCHERI I FVLDENSIS BVCHONII, E
SOC. IESV, I MATHEMATVM IN COLLEGIO ROMANO
IEIVSDEM SOCIETATIS PROFESSORIS ORDINARII I

MAGNES Siue DE ARTE MAGNETICA OPVS TRI-

I I I

PARTITVM, Quo PRAETERQVAM QVOD VNIVERSA

I I

IMAGNETIS NATVRA, EIVSQVE IN OMNIBVS Artibus & I

Scientijsvsus noua Methodo explicetur, e viribus quoque & I

prodigiosis effectibus Magneticarum, aliarumq; abditarum

Naturae motionum in Elementis, Lapidibus, Plantis & Ani-
I

malibus elucescentium, multa hucusque incognita Naturae I

arcana per Physica, Medica, Chymica, & Mathematica omnis I

generis experimenta recluduntur. Editio secunda post I I

Romanam multd correctior. [title vignette] COLONI/E AGRIP- I I

PIN/E Apud IODOCVM KALCOVEN,

I M.DC.XLIII. I ANNO
I Consensu Auctoris, Superiorum Facilitate, & speciali S. Caesarese I

M. Privilegio. [1643]

20.8 x 15 cm. (8 3/16 x 6 in.); [30], 798, [38] pp.

Bound contemporary stiff-board vellum, northern European; ink title on

in
spine; initials; tailpieces; printed signatures, custodes, and marginal glosses; numer-
ous tables, woodcut illustrations and diagrams; 32 full-page woodcuts and engrav-
ings, 1 fold-out, 5 tipped in, 1 volvelle to be attached opposite p. 244; printed music.
There is an additional engraved title page closely resembling that of the first
edition (Item 4): MAGNES I Siue de I ARTE MAGNETICA I LIBRI TRES I Authore I

P.Athanasio Kirchero I Fuld: Buchonio e Soc: Ies. I AD I Sacratissimum atq. Inuictiss I

FERDINANDVM III I AVSTRIACVM I Rom Imperat: I Semper I Augustum I

COLONI/E AGRIPPIN/E I apud IODOCVM KALCOVEN.

As end of book 3 gives the editing date as
in the first edition, a note at the
2 May 1641. The dedicatory and privileges are the same as those in the first
epistle
edition save that a new privilege, dated from Cologne, 13 March 1643, has been added
from Gosvinus Nickel, provincial of the Jesuit province below the Rhine. There is also
a privilege, given from Regensburg, 10 September 1640 from Ferdinand III to Jodocus
Kalcoven, the printer, according him sole right to print this book.

This second edition of Magnes sive de arte magnetica was corrected and
enlarged by the author shortly after the first edition was published. The
subjects treated remain the same (see Item 4).
 PROVENANCE: Bookplate of Harrison D. Horblit; illegible oval stamp on
title page.

REFERENCES: Brunet III, 667; Caillet II, 362.5779; Clendening 5.3; De Backer
I, 422-23.5; Graesse I V, 21 ; Sommervogel IV, 1 048-49.6.
^^

A fanciful sundial.
From Magnes sive arte magnetica (Item 4).
6. ATHANASII KIRCHERI SOCIETATIS IESV. MAG- I I

NES I SIVE DE ARTE MAGNETICA OPVS TRIPARTITVM

I I

I QVO Vniuersa Magnetis Natura, eiusque in omnibus Scien-

I

tijs &
Artibus vsus, noua me- thodo explicatur: ac praeterea e I

viribus & prodigiosis effectibus Magnetica- rum, aliarumque I

abditarum Naturae motionum in Elementis, Lapidibus, Plan- I

tis, Animalibus, elucescentium, multa hucusque incognita I

Naturae arcana, per Physica, Medica, Chymica, & Mathe-

I matica omnis generis Experimenta recluduntur. EDITIO I

TERTIA. Ab ipso Authore recognita, emendataque, ac multis nouo-

I

rum Experimentorum problematis aucta. [engraved vignette

I I

with printer's device] ROM/E MDCLIV. Sumptibus BlasijI I

Deuersin, & Zanobij Masotti Bibliopolarum. Typis Vitalis I

Mascardi. Superiorum permissu, & Priuilegijs. [1654]

33 x 21 cm. (13 x 8 1/4 in.); [32], 618, [28] pp.

Bound
in modern stiff-board vellum; ink lettering on spine; triple, blind-
stamped on covers; blued edges; title page in red and black; head- and tailpieces;
fillets

initials; printed signatures, custodes, and marginal glosses; numerous engraved and

woodcut illustrations.
There is an additional title page with a miniature portrait of Ferdinand IV,
engraved by F. Valentini: ATHANASII KIRCHERI SOCIETATIS IESV MAGNES I I I

SIVE DE MAGNETICA ARTE LIBRI TRES ROM7E MDCLIV Sumptibus Blasij

I I I

Diuersini et Zenobij Masotti I AD FERDINANDVM IV ROMANORVM REGEM

SEMPER AVGVSTVM.
The work is dedicated to Ferdinand IV, son of Ferdinand III, the reigning
emperor. The dedicatory epistle is dated from the Roman College, 1 January 1654.
Ferdinand IV died the same year at the age of 21 The privilege from Superior General .

Goswinus Nickel is dated 29 October 1653.

This third edition of Magnes, the finest and most complete of the
three editions, was greatly enlarged by Kircher. It contains many observa-
tions and experiments not in the two previous editions; however, the subjects
treated remain the same (see items 4 and 5). The third edition is the first folio
edition of Magnes.

PROVENANCE: Stamp of C. E. Rappaport, bookseller in Rome; Societa

Chimica Italiana in Rome, 19 April 1963 (printed preliminary leaf).

REFERENCES: Brunet III, 667; Caillet II, 362.5780; De Backer I, 422-23.5;

Graesse IV, 21; Sommervogel IV, 1048-49.6.

10
Engraved title page from Ars magna lucis et umbrae (Item 7).

11
7. ATHANASII KIRCHERI I FVLDENSIS BVCHONII I E
SOC. IESV PRESBYTERI; Olim in Herbipolensi, & Aue- I

nionensi Societatis IESV Gymnasijs Orientalium linguarum, & I

Matheseos, nunc huius in Romano Collegio Professoris ordi-

I

narij. ARS MAGNA LVCIS ET VMBRAE In decern Libros

I I I

digesta. QVIBVS ADMIRANDAE LVCIS ET VMBRAE in

I I I

mundo, atque adeo vniuersa natura, vires effectusq. vti noua, I

ita varia nouorum reconditiorumq. speciminum exhibitions I

ad varios mor- talium vsus, panduntur. Cum priuilegio Sacr.

I I

Caesar. Maiestatis. mixa nD'tfns ais to ctkotos awifj*; oih-ws to

I I

4>a)s avT-f|s sicuti tenebrae eius ita & lumen eius. Psal. 138 [title
I I

vignette] ROMAE, Sumptibus Hermanni Scheus. MDCXLVI.

I

I Ex Typographic! LudouiciGrignani. SVPERIORVM PERMISSV. I

[1646]

colophon: ROM/E, Sumptibus Hermanni Scheus sub

signo Reginae. MDCXLVI. Ex Typographic! Ludouici Grignani. I

I Superiorum Permissu, & cum Priuilegio Sac. Caesar.

Maiestatis.

32 x 21.8 cm. (12 9/16 x 8 1/2 in.); [40], 935, [15] pp.

Modern blind-tooled calf facsimile binding; green lettering piece on spine;

initials; tailpieces; printed signatures, custodes, and marginal glosses; numerous
woodcut diagrams, maps, and illustrations; tables; 34 full-page woodcuts and engrav-
ings, 1 fold-out.
Preliminary leaves 6 and 7 are missing from BYU's copy. An additional,
engraved page by the Burgundian engraver Petrus Miotte displays the effigy of
title

Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, to whom the work is dedicated, and reads: ATHA-
NASII KIRCHERI. S.I ARS MAGNA LVCIS ET VMBRyE Ad Serenissi. princip
I I I I I

FERDINANDVM ARCHIDVCEM AUSTRI/E C/ESARIS FILIVM Rotme Apud

I I I

Hermannum Scheus.
Archduke Ferdinand was the eldest son of Kircher's patron, the Emperor
Ferdinand August 1646, after this work was published, the young Ferdinand
III. In
was made king of Hungary and in the following year king of Bohemia, the natural
processes in anticipation of election as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. But in
1654 the heir apparent died, and his younger brother Leopold Ignatius became heir.
The dedicatory epistle is dated from the Roman College, 1 November 1645. The
privilege from Ferdinand III is dated from Vienna, 1 June 1644.

12
 In Ars magna lucis et umbrae Kircher discusses the sources of light and
shadow. The work deals especially with the sun, moon, stars, and planets.
Kircher also treats phenomena related to light, such as optical illusions, color
and refraction, projection and and instruments
distortion, comets, eclipses,
that use light, such as sundials and mirrors. He theorizes about the type of
mirror supposed to have been used by Archimedes to set Roman ships afire,
drawing from notes of his own experiments performed in the harbor of
Syracuse. The work includes one of the first treatises on phosphorous and
fireflies. Here Kircher also published his depictions of Saturn and Jupiter as

he saw them through a telescope in Bologna in 1643. On that occasion he

observed that the planets were neither perfectly round nor self-luminous,
contrary to the popular Aristotelian belief that they are perfect, unchanging
spheres.
Kircher takes a great interest in sundials and mirrors in this book,
and several interesting engravings are of fanciful sundials. He had written
extensively on these subjects in his previous work, the Primitix gnomonica?
catoptrica? (Item 2). In Ars magna
umbrae Kircher also discusses an odd
lucis et

ancestor of the modern "magic lantern," of

projector: a device called the
which he is generally, though erroneously, considered the inventor.
Before writing this work, Kircher had read Kepler's Ad vitellionem
paralipomena (1604), the first modern work on optics, a copy of which is in
BYU's collection, and was influenced to some extent by it. Theirs magna lucis
et umbrae reveals Kircher's contribution as an astute observer and cataloguer
of natural phenomena.

BYU's copy is the first edition; a second edition was published in

Amsterdam in 1671.

REFERENCES: Brunet III, 666; Caillet II, 360.5770; Clendening 5.4; De Backer
I, 423-24.7; Graesse IV, 21; Sommervogel IV, 1050.9.

13
 :oni nui Xxw
gA RMQN IA HAS,

ip^-f kt:

MIL
Jj
'' 7
e -
J

The six days of creation are here represented in the six registers of an organ.
From Musurgia universalis (Item 8).

14
8. ATHANASII KIRCHERI I FVLDENSIS E SOC. IESV
PRESBYTERI MVSVRGIA VNIVERSALIS SIVE ARS
I I I I

MAGNA CONSONI ET DISSONI IN X. LIBROS DIGESTA.

I I

IQua Vniuersa Sonorum doctrina, & Philosophia, Musicaeque

tarn Theoricae, quam practical scientia, summa varietate tradi- I

tur; admirandae Consoni, & Dissoni in mundo, adeoque

I Vniuersa Natura vires effectusque, vti noua, ita peregrina vari-
orum speciminum exhibitione ad singulares vsus, turn in omni
I

pcene facultate, turn potissimum in Philologia, Mathematica, I

Physica, Mechanica, Medicina, Politica, Metaphysica, Theo- I

logia, aperiuntur & demonstrantur. Tomus I. Pulsare certant I I

plectra Victori repens Cicada, fractam voce suppleuit fidem.

I

IFactum Eunomij & Aristonis ex gemma Veterum, [title vignette] I

I ROMAE, Ex Typographia Haeredum Francisci Corbelletti.

Anno Iubilaei. MDCL. I SVPERIORVM PERMISSV. [1650]

32.2 x 22.5 cm. (12 3/4 x 8 7/8 in.; both volumes); [22], 690 pp. (tome 1); [21,

462, [36] pp. (tome 2).

Rebound in twentieth-century towed pigskin restoration binding by the

BYU Library conservation laboratory (previously bound in contemporary German
stiff-board vellum, in poor condition when acquired); gold lettering on spine; head-
and tailpieces; initials; printed signatures, custodes, and marginal glosses; printed
music; tables; woodcut illustrations and diagrams; 22 full-page woodcuts and engrav-
ings, 1 bi-folio, 1 fold-out.
An engraved portrait, dated "Antwerpe, 1649," of Archduke Leopold
Wilhelm of Austria, to whom
work is dedicated, was designed by the Austrian
the
papal Johannes Paul Schor and engraved by Paulus Pontius, a student of Rubens
artist

and one of the finest Flemish engravers of his time. Archduke Leopold, the younger
brother of Emperor Ferdinand III, was made regent over the empire after Ferdinand's
death in 1657. He refused the offer of the imperial crown in preference to Ferdinand's
second son and emperor-elect, Leopold Ignatius, who was crowned Leopold I in 1658.
Tomes 1 (books 1-7) and 2 (books 8-10) are bound separately. Tome 1 has an
added engraved title page: ATHANASI KIRCHERI SOC. IESV' MVSVRGIA I

VNIVERSALIS sine ARS M[...] I AD SERENISSO LEOPOLDVM GVILIELMV

ARCHIDVCEM AVSTRI^E. Johannes Paul Schor is named as the designer, and in the
bottom right appears "Baronius F. Roma?," the engraver perhaps being Jean Baron, the
Toulousan engraver who died in Rome shortly after 1650.
The dedicatory epistle is dated from Rome, 8 December 1649, and the
privilege from Superior General Vincentius Carrafa is dated from Rome, 16 June 1648.
Tome 2 has no separate title page.

15
 Musurgia universalis is one of Kircher's most important, enduring,
and informative works. Kircher attempted to compile in this book all the
musical knowledge available in his day, making it the first exhaustive ency-
clopedia of music. For musicologists it has long been an invaluable source of
information on baroque concepts of style and composition. Kircher wrote the
Musurgia time of the great transition when the old Renaissance polyph-
at the
ony, stilluse in the Church, was giving way to the new baroque style in
in
secular music, most notably in opera. Kircher reveals an astounding knowl-
edge and understanding of contemporary music and of this transition.
Indeed, he gives the earliest account of the "doctrine of the affections," the
baroque idea that music should imitate emotions.
Kircher reproduces many complete musical pieces of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries to illustrate various styles —he even includes a
three-part fantasy of his own —and musicologists have Kircher to thank for
preserving many instrumental pieces of Frescobaldi, Froberger, and other
early baroque composers. The work even features a musical composition by
Emperor Ferdinand III. Kircher was aided in his research by the Italian
composer Antonio Maria Abbatini, the maestro di capella at the Lateran.
Besides his interest in contemporary music theory, Kircher was also firmly
established in classical music theory. Like many of his predecessors and
contemporaries, he followed Boethius and emphasized the mathematics of
music and its relationship to the harmony of the body, per Robert Fludd, and
of the solar system, per Kepler.
A portion of the work is devoted to ancient Hebrew and Greek music,
but Kircher's speculations on ancient music were often grossly inaccurate. To
this day controversy still rages over a musical setting he gave to a poem of
Pindar transcribed from a manuscript he is supposed to have seen in Sicily
but which has since disappeared. The Musurgia is also interesting for the
history of instrument-making. Many plates are of ancient and contemporary
instruments. Kircher begins the work by illustrating the anatomy of voice and
hearing, the most common instrument. He includes a treatise on acoustics, a
subject he would take up again in the Phonurgia nova (Item 25).
Kircher also discusses many of his own inventions, like the talking
statue, the megaphone, and numerous mechanical music-makers. One of
these inventions, a product of his mathematical concept of music, is an
ingenious composing computer called an area musarithmica or musurgia
mechanica. The area was a chest containing numbered rods, which the com-
poser could move about and combine to produce melodic and rhythmic
patterns. This mathematical method of composition would perhaps seem less
odd to the student of modern music than it did to Kircher's contemporaries. A
surviving area can be seen today in the Pepysian Library, Magdalene College,
Cambridge.

lb
 Kircher's Musurgia gained immediate and lasting popularity.
Samuel Pepys recorded in his Diary, 22 February 1668, "Up, and by coach
through Ducke lane; and there did buy Kircher's Musurgia, cost me 35s, a
book I am mighty glad of, expecting to find great satisfaction in it." The
Musurgia remained the standard exhaustive encyclopedia of music into the
eighteenth century.

BYU's copy of Musurgia is the first edition. A second edition was

published in Amsterdam in 1662.

REFERENCES: Brunet III, 668; Caillet II, 363.5785; Clendening 6.5; De Backer
I, Meibom I, preface; Sommervogel IV, 1051.11.
424.8; Graesse IV, 21;

Orpheus charming Cerberus with his lyre.

Engraved frontispiece from vol. 2 of Musurgia universalis (Item 8).

17
9. ATHANASII KIRCHERI E SOC. IESV OBELISCVS
I I

I PAMPHILIVS, I HOC EST,INTERPRETATIO Noua &

I I

hucusque intentata I OBELISCI HIEROGLYPHICI Quern non I

ita pridem ex Veteri Hippodromo Antonini Caracallae I Caesaris,

in Agonale Forum transtulit, integritati restituit, & I in Vrbis
^Eternae ornamentum erexit INNOCENTIVS X. I I PONT.
MAX. I In quo post varia /Egyptiacae, Chaldaicae, Hebraicae,
Graecanicae Antiquitatis, I doctrinaeque qua Sacrae, qua Profanae
monumenta, Veterum tandem Theologia, hieroglyphicis
I

inuoluta symbolis, detecta I e tenebris in lucem afferitur. I [arms

of Innocent X] I ROM^, Typis Ludouici Grignani. Anno Iubilei
MDCL. I SVPERIORVMPERMISSV. [1650]

colophon: [device] ROM/E, Typis Ludouici Grignani.

I

Anno MDCL. SVPERIORVM PERMISSV.

Iubilaei I

33 x 22.5 cm. (13 x 8 7/8 in.); [68], 560, [30] pp.

Contemporary limp vellum Spanish binding; decorative inking and title on

spine; head- and tailpieces; initials; printed signatures, custodes, and marginal
glosses; engraved portrait of Innocent X; 1 fold-out engraved plate with detailed
diagram of obelisk; 6 full-page woodcuts and engravings; illustrations.
The work includes an added engraved title page: OBELISCVS PAMPHI- I

LIUS ATHANASII KIRCHERI. The title page was designed by Giovanni-Angelo

I I

Canini, the Italian painter, engraver, and archeologist who, in 1654, came under the
patronage of Christina, the former queen of Sweden. The engraver was Cornelis
Bloemaert II, the Dutch engraver and member of a family of distinguished artists.
The dedicatory epistle to Pope Innocent X is dated from Rome, 4 October
1650. A letter to Kircher from Emperor Ferdinand III is dated from Regensburg,
30 October 1640.

The Obeliscus pamphilius is Kircher's first complete exposition of his

principles for translating Egyptian hieroglyphs. The work was occasioned by
his commission under Pope Innocent X to study and restore the fallen obelisk
the pope was reerecting in front of the Palazzo Pamfili. The obelisk was
actually restored by Gian Lorenzo Bernini under Kircher's direction. In this
work Kircher maintains the symbolic method of interpretation he hinted at
earlier in his Prodromus coptus sive aegyptiacus (Item 3) and Lingua aegyptiaca
restituta (1643). Like most of Kircher's works, this book is filled with fascinat-
ing arcana, and Kircher's interpretations of Egyptian mythology and lore are
of particular interest.

IS
 PROVENANCE: "Collegio de la compania de Jesus de Cordoba" and

"BBS[?1" (inscriptions on title page and added title page).

REFERENCES: Brunet III, 668; Caillet II, 364.5787; Clendening 6.6; De Backer
1, 424.9; Graasse IV, 22; Sommervogel IV, 1052.12.

Engraved title page from Obeliscus pamphilius (Item 9).

19
 CEdipus (Kircher himself) solves the riddle of the Spin*
Engraved title page from CEdipus eegyptiacus (Item 10).

20
10. [Tome 1:] ATHANASII KIRCHERI I E SOC. IESV,
I OEDIPVS I AEGYPTIACVS. I HOC EST I Vniuersalis Hiero-
glyphicae Veterum I Doctrinae temporum iniuria abolitae I

INSTAVRATIO. I Opus ex omni Orientalium doctrina &

sapientia I conditum, nee non viginti diuersarum linguarum I

authoritate stabilitum, I Felicibus Auspicijs FERDINANDI III. I

I AVSTRIACI I Sapientissimi & Inuictissimi Romanorum I

Imperatoris semper Augusti I e tenebris erutum, I Atque Bono

Reipublicae Literariae consecratum. I Tomus I. I [ornament]
\ROMJE, I Ex Typographia Vitalis Mascardi, M DC LII. I

SVPERIORVM PERMISSV. [1652]

[Tome 2, Part 1:] ATHANASII KIRCHERI SOC. IESV OED- I I

IPI I AEGYPTIACI Tomus Secundus. GYMNASIVM SIVE I I I

I Phrontisterion Hieroglyphicum in Duodecim I Classes dis-

tributum, I IN QVIBVS I Encyclopaedia /Egyptiorum, id est,
Veterum Hebraeorum, Chal- I daeorum, /Egyptiorum,
Graecorum, cceterorumque Orientalium recondita Sapientia, I

hucusque temporum iniuria perdita, per artificiosum sacra- I

rum Sculpturarum contextum de- monstrata, instauratur, I

I Felicibus Auspicijs I FERDINANDI III. I CAESARIS. I PARS

PRIMA Complectens Sex priores Classes.
I ROMJE, Ex I I

Typographia Vitalis Mascardi, Anno DC LIU. SVPERI- M I

ORVM PERMISSV. [1653]

[Tome 2, Part 2:] ATHANASII KIRCHERI SOC. IESV I I OED-

IPI I AEGYPTIACI Tomi Secundi PARS ALTERA I I I Com-
plectens Sex posteriores I Classes. I Felicibus Auspicijs I

FERDINANDI III. CAESARIS.

I I [device with the imperial
arms and the Hapsburg eagle] I ROM^, I Ex Typographia
Vitalis Mascardi, Anno M DC LIII. I SVPERIORVM PERMISSV.
[1653]

[Tome 3:] ATHANASII KIRCHERI SOC. IESV OEDIPI I i I

AEGYPTIACI Tomus III. THEATRVM HIEROGLY- I I

PHICVM, HOC EST, Noua & hucusque intentata OBELIS-

I I I

CORVM I Cceterorumque Hieroglyphicorum Monumen-I

21
torum, quae turn Romae, turn in Aegypto, ac celebrioribus I

Europae Musaeis adhuc supersunt, INTERPRETATIO Iuxta

I I I

sensum Physicum, Tropologicum, Mysticum, Hi- storicum, I

Politicum, Magicum, Medicum, Mathemati- cum, Cabalis-

I

ticum, Hermeticum, Sophicum, Theo- I sophicum; ex omni

Orientalium doctrina I & sapientia demonstrata. I Felicibus
Auspicijs I FERDINANDI III. I CAESARIS. I ROMJE, I Ex
Typographia Anno a Partu
Vitalis Mascardi, Virgineo M DC
LIV. I SVPERIORVMPERMISSV. [1654]
colopha: ROM^E, I Ex Officina Typographica Vitalis Mas-
cardi, I ANNO M DC LIV. [1654] (tome 2, part ROMJE, Ex 1); I

Typographia Vitalis Mascardi, M DC LIV. I Superiorum permissu.

[1654] (tome 2, part 2); ROM/E, Ex Typographia Vitalis Mas- I

cardi, M DC LV. SVPERIORVMPERMISSV. [1655] (tome 3).

I

38.5 x 27 cm. (153/16 x 10 5/8 in.; volume 1); 38.5 x 27.2 cm. (15 3/16 x
10 3/4 in.; volume 2); 5/16 x 10 11/16 in.; volume 3); 39 x 26.4 cm.
38.9 x 27.2 cm. (15
(15 3/8x103/8 in.; volume 4); [96], 424, [40] pp. (tome 1 ); [2], 440, [30] pp. (tome 2, part
1); 546, [13] pp. (tome 2, part 2); [2], 590, [36] pp. (tome 3).

Three tomes bound in four volumes; all bound in contemporary limp vel-
lum; ink lettering on spine; trimmed edges; browning paper; head- and tailpieces;
initials; printed signatures, custodes, and marginal glosses; numerous engraved and

woodcut illustrations; 12 fold-out engravings.

There is an additional, engraved title page in tome 1 designed by Giovanni-
Angelo Canini and engraved by Cornelis Bloemaert II: ATHANASII KIRCHERI E
SOCIETATE 1ESV I OEDIPVS/EGYPTIACVS I AD FERDINANDVM III C/ESAREM
SEMPER AVGVSTVM.
Tome 1 contains a fine portrait of Ferdinand III — to whom the work as a
whole is dedicated —designed by the Italian portraitist Jacopo Bicchi and engraved by
Cornelis Bloemaert II.

The dedicatory epistle is dated from the Roman College, 1 January 1655. It is
followed by 56 pages containing 27 elogies to Ferdinand in as many different lan-
—
guages including Chinese, Bohemian, Coptic, and Egyptian composed by Kircher —
and his fellow churchmen. The privilege from Superior General Goswinus Nickel is
dated 12 January 1655. Small portions of the work are dedicated individually to
various political and ecclesiastical authorities.

CEdipus aegyptiacus, Kircher's largest and most astounding work, is

the culmination of years of research in Egyptology. The work is an exhaustive

treatise on every aspect of ancient Egypt, from history and geography to

22
The 72 names of God in 72 languages. The scheme is based on the Cabbala.
From CEdipus eegyptiacus (Item 10).

23
science, religion, and magic. Tome 1 gives a general overview of Egypt, her
geography, the nature of the Nile, and the workings of ancient Egyptian
government. Kircher also introduces here the Egyptian pantheon and dem-
onstrates how Egyptian gods were carried into Greek and Roman worship.
He discusses Egyptian religious influence on the Hebrews, Syrians, Babyloni-
ans, Persians, Samaritans, and others. The tome culminates with a discussion
of the affinities between Egyptian religion and the religious practices and
mythologies of China, Japan, India, Mongolia, and, interestingly enough, the
Aztec culture of America. The similarities, according to Kircher, result from
common ancestry.
Part1 of tome 2 begins with a discussion of hieroglyphics, their

origin, and Kircher's method of interpretation. Because Kircher was certain

that hieroglyphs were pictographs symbolizing the Egyptians' highest philo-
sophical and theological concepts, he made an exhaustive study of all the
literature on Egyptian philosophy and religion. No information was passed
over. He then compared these with subsequent developments among later
cultures. In the remainder of part 1, Kircher expounds these mysteries and
their affinities with the writings of Hermes Trismegistus, Zoroaster, Orpheus,
Proclus, Plato, Psellus, the Alexandrian Fathers, the Greek myths, the Book of
Enoch, and the Chaldean Oracles. He includes a large section on the Hebrew
Cabbala. In the second part of tome 2, under what he calls "Hieroglyphic
Mathematics," Kircher discusses the significance of numbers, geometric
shapes, music and its relation to the order of the universe, and astrology. He

does the same with hieroglyphic medicine, hieroglyphic alchemy, hiero-

glyphic magic, hieroglyphic theology, and the "Mechanics of the Egyptians."
In short, tome 2 of CEdipus aegyptiacus is filled with the type of recondite
learning that only a polymath like Kircher could amass.
Kircher begins tome 3 with a further discussion of the origin of
hieroglyphics and the relationship of Egyptian hieroglyphics to other writing
systems, most notably to Chinese characters and Aztec hieroglyphs. He
devotes the bulk of the tome to interpretations of the hieroglyphs found on
the Bembine tablet (so called for its former owner, Cardinal Torquato
Bembo), several obelisks, sarcophagi, amulets, and other ancient artifacts.

PROVENANCE: Engraved bookplate with inscription "LPN" on inside

cover of each volume.

REFERENCES: Brunet III, 668 ("Ce savant ouvrage est Ie plus recherche, et
l'un des plus rares de tous ceux du P. Kircher"); Caillet II, 364.5788; Clendening 7.7;
De Backer I, 424-26.10; Graesse IV, 22; Sommervogel IV, 1052-56.13.

24
An Aztec inscription sent to Kircher by a fellow Jesuit in Mexico.
Kircher attempted to demonstrate similarities between the Aztec
and Egyptian writing systems. From CEdipus xgyptiacus (Item 10).

25
 —

11. ATHANASII KIRCHERI I E SOC IESV ITINER- I

ARIVM EXSTATICVM QVO

I I I MVNDI OPIFICIVM ID I

EST I Coelestis expansi, siderumque tarn errantium, quam

I fixorum natura, vires, proprietates, singulorum- que com- I

positio & structura, ab infimo Telluris globo, vsque ad vltima

I

Mundi confinia, per ficti raptus I integumentum explorata,

noua hypot[hesi] I exponitur ad veritatem I INTER-
LOCVTORIBVS COSMIELE ET THEODIDACTO
I AD I

ISERENISSIMAM CHRISTINAM ALEXANDRAM

I I I

Suecorum, Gothorum, & VVandalorum I Reginam. I

ROMJE, Typis Vitalis Mascardi, Anno 1656. I SVPERIORVM

PERMISSV.
23.5 x 18 cm. (91/4x7 in.); [8], 464, [24] pp.

Bound contemporary stiff-board vellum, probably Dutch; ink title on

in
spine; blued edges; some browning and damp-staining; initials; head- and tailpieces;
printed signatures, custodes, and marginal glosses.
The dedicatory epistle to the former Swedish Queen Christina Alexandra is
dated from the Roman College, 1 June 1656 The privilege from Goswinus Nickel, the
.

superior general, is dated 15 November 1655.

is one of Kircher's most curious works. He

Itinerarium exstaticum
wrote the form of a narrative in which a certain Theodidactus
treatise in the
—
Kircher himself is caught up in a dream-vision or an ecstatic journey and is
guided through the heavens by a spirit named Cosmiel. The genre was not
uncommon: the Somnium Scipionis of Cicero, a popular example from antiq-
uity, and Kepler's Somnium, published posthumously in 1634, both recount
dream-journeys to the moon. In the first dialogue, Kircher recounts the
journey to the moon, which he finds scarred with mountains and craters,
contrary to the Aristotelian view. He flies on to Venus, which he discovers is
made of the four elements, and so on to each of the other planets and through
the region of the fixed stars. The sun itself has blemishes, Kircher proclaims.
He himself had seen sunspots through a telescope several years earlier.
Kircher rejected the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic cosmologies in favor
of that of Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), who argued that the sun orbits the earth
and is in turn orbited by the planets and the fixed stars. The Tychonian
system was adopted by most of Kircher's fellow Jesuits, since it allowed them
to maintain geocentric orthodoxy while espousing, at least in part, the new,
more scientific heliocentricity advocated by the Copernicans. Kircher
broaches this subject more directly in the second dialogue, where he deals
with the creation of the earth, its position in the universe, its various

26
characteristics and limitations, and finally, its eventual destruction. To
support his views Kircher cites scriptural and scientific authorities in his con-
clusion. Among the latter are the astronomer Johannes Hevelius, the influen-
tial astronomer and meteorologist Gottfried Wendelin, Galileo, and other
less-orthodox scientists of his day. This scientific, religious, and semimystical
work testifies to Kircher's dubious poise at the juncture of two ages.

Hinerarium exstaticum is bound with Iter extaticum II (Item 13); also in

the BYU collections is the second edition, published in Wiirzburg in 1660
(Item 12). Other editions were issued at Wiirzburg in 1671, Tyrnau in 1729,
and Kaschau in 1753.

PROVENANCE: "Monasterii Weingare[tensis] 1691," "Monasterii Hofen-

sis" (inscriptions on title page); seal of the [K6ni]gliche [B]and Bibliothek (?) on title

page.

REFERENCES: Brunet III, 667; De Backer I, 426.11; Graesse IV, 21; Sommer-
vogel IV, 1056-57.14.

Kircher's speculation on the Northern Zodiac as conceived by the Egyptians.

From CEdipus xgyptiacus (Item 10).

27
12. ATHANASII KIRCHERI E SOCIETATE JESU
R.P. I I I

ITER EXSTATICUM COELESTE, Quo Mundi opificium, id

I I

est, Coelestis Expansi, siderumq; tarn errantium, quam I

fixorum natura, vires, proprietates, singulo- rumq; compositio I

& structura, ab infimo Telluris globo, usq; ad ultima Mundi I

confinia, per ficti raptus integumentum explorata, nova I

hypothesi exponitur ad veritatem, INTERLOCUTORIBUS I

I

COSMIELE ET THEODIDACTO: Hac secunda editione I

Praelusionibus & Scholiis illustra- turn; ac schematismis neces- I

sariis, qui deerant, exornatum; nee non a mendis, quae in I

primam Romanam editionem irre- pserant, expurgatum, I I

IPSO AUCTORE ANNUENTE, I A I P. GASPARE SCHOTTO

I REGISCURIANOE SOCIETATE JESU, I Olim in Panormitano
Siciliae, nunc in Herbipolitano I Franconiae Gymnasio ejusdem
SOCIETATIS JESU Matheseos Professore. Accessit ejusdem
I I

Auctoris ITER EXSTATICUM TERRESTRE, & SYNOPSIS

I I I

MUNDI SUBTERRANEI. HERBIPOLI Sumptibus Joh. Andr. I I

& Wolffg. Jun. Endterorum haeredibus, Prostat Norimbergse I

apud eosdem. ANNO M. DC. LX. [1660]

I

21 x 17 cm. (81/4x6 5/8 in.); [24], 512 pp. (paginated continuously with
Item 14).

Contemporary mottled calf binding with deterioration associated with mot-

tling; tightback sewn over four cords; lettering piece on spine; paper edges mottled in
blue and red; initials; head- and tailpieces; printed signatures, custodes, and marginal
glosses; tables; 12 full-page engravings and woodcuts, including a diagram of the
sunspots.
BYU's copy is missing plate 2. The arms of Joachim von Gravenegg, abbot of
Fulda, appear on the verso of the title page. There is an additional engraved title page:
ITER EXSTATICUM I KIRCHERIANUM, Praelusionibus & Scholijs
I I illustratum,
schematibusq; I exornatum a P. GASP. SCHOTTO,
I Societatis JESU. I I 1660.

For a description of the contents of this work, see the first edition
(Item 11). The second edition of Iter exstaticum coeleste was prepared by
Kircher's friend and disciple Gaspar Schott (1608-66), whose dedicatory
epistle to Joachim von Gravenegg, abbot of Fulda and archchancellor of the
emperor over Germany and France, is dated from Wiirzburg, 8 September
1660. Two privileges from Ricquinus Goltgens, provincial of the Jesuit upper

28
 —
Rhine province, are given one to the author and one to the printer both —
dated from Wurzburg, 27 June 1 660. Schott appended 27 pages of apologetics
in defense of Kircher against accusations of heresy by a fellow Jesuit,
Melchior Corneus.

This second edition of Iter extaticum coeleste is bound with the second
edition of Iter extaticum II (Item 14).

PROVENANCE: Bookplate and stamp of Phillips Library of Harvard Col-

lege Observatory; "Harvard College Library from the library of Robert Wheeler
Willson January 12, 1927" (stamp on verso of additional title page); second stamp
"Transferred to Astronomical Observatory"; "dHC" (inscription on title page).

REFERENCES: Brunet III, 667; Caillet II, 361 .5776; Clendening 8.9; De Backer
1, 426.11; Graesse IV, 21; Sommervogel IV, 1056-57.14.

Miniature portrait of Kircher with the angel Cosmiele.

Engraved title page from Iter exstaticum Kircherianum
(Item 12).

29
13. ATHANASII KIRCHERI E SOC. IESV ITER I I

EXTATICVM II. Qui & Mundi Subterranei PRODROMVS

I I

dicitur. QVO GEOCOSMI OPIFICIVM SIVE Terrestris

I I I I

Globi Structura, vna cum abditis in ea constitutis arcanioris I

Naturae Re- conditorijs, per ficti raptus inte-

I gumentum I

exponitur ad veritatem. IIn III. Dialogos distinctum. AD I I

SERENISSIMVM I LEOPOLDVM IGNATIVM Hungarian I &

Bohemias Regem. I ROM/E, Typis Mascardi. M.DC.LVII. I

SVPERIORVM PERMISSV. [1657]

23.5 x 18 cm. (91/4x7 in.); [24], 237, [13] pp.

Bound contemporary stiff-board vellum, probably Dutch; ink title on

in
spine; blued edges; some browning and damp-staining; initials; tailpieces; printed
signatures, custodes, and marginal glosses.
The dedicatory epistle to Leopold Ignatius, king of Hungary and Bohemia
and son of Kircher's patron Ferdinand III, is dated from Rome, 1 November 1657. The
next year Leopold was crowned emperor. The privilege from Joannes Rho, the
provincial of the Jesuit province of Rome, is dated 2 August 1657.

This first edition of Iter extaticum II continues the dialogues of the

Itinerarium extaticum (Item 11). Having journeyed through the heavens with
the angel Cosmiel, Theodidactus (i.e., Kircher) descends with a second guide,
Hydriel, and examines the waters and their natures. Cosmiel then returns
and shows him the land, its geography, its characteristics, and wonders. This
dialogue also treats animals and plants and their generation and corruption.
In the third dialogue they explore the wonders of the submarine world, and
in the fourth the subterranean world. The work is, as the title indicates, a
prodrotnus or prolegomenon, an introduction to Kircher's later work Mundus
subterraneus (Item 17). At the end of Iter extaticum II Kircher appended a
synopsis of this forthcoming work.

Iter extaticum II is bound with Itinerarium extaticum (Item 11); also in

the BYU collections is the second edition of Iter extaticum II (Item 14). Other
editions were published at Tyrnau in 1729 and Kaschau in 1753.

PROVENANCE: (See Item 11).

REFERENCES: Brunet III, 667; De Backer I, 426.12; Graesse IV, 21; Sommer-
vogel IV, 1057.15.

30
 The Pamphilian obelisk.
From Obeliscus pamphilius (Item 9).

31
14. ATHANASII KIRCHERI E SOC. JESU ITER I I

EXTATICUM II. Qui & Mundi Subterranei

I Prodromus I

dicitur; Quo GEOCOSMI OPIFICIUM, SIVE Terrestris

I I I I

Globi Structura, una cum abditis in ea consti- tutis arcanioris I

Naturae Reconditoriis, per ficti ra- ptus integumentum exponi- I

tur ad veritatem.
I In III. Dialogos distinctum, & hac se-
I I

cunda editione a mendis, quae in primam Roma- nam irrepse- I

rant, expurgatum. Accessit in I fine SYNOPSIS Mundi Subterra-

nei I ejusdem Auctoris. [1660]

21 x 17 cm. (81/4x6 5/8 in.); 176, [19] pp. (paginated continuously with
Item 12).

Contemporary mottled calf binding with deterioration associated with mot-

tling; tightback sewn over four cords; lettering piece on spine; paper edges are
mottled in blue and red; initials; head- and tailpieces; printed signatures, custodes,
and marginal glosses.

For a description of the contents of this work, see the first edition
(Item This second edition of Iter extaticum II was prepared by Kircher's
13).
friend and disciple Gaspar Schott. A synopsis of Kircher's forthcoming
Miindus subterraneus (Item 17) is appended.

This second edition of Iter extaticum II is bound with the second

edition of Iter extaticum coeleste and comprises pp. 513-689 (Item 12).

PROVENANCE: (See Item 12).

REFERENCES: Brunet III, 667; Clendening 8.9; De Backer I, 426.12; Graesse

IV, 21; Sommervogel IV, 1057.15.

32
15. ATHANASII KIRCHERI E SOC. IESV SCRVTINIVM I I

I PHYSICO-MEDICVM Contagiosa? Luis, quae PESTIS dici-

I

tur. I QVO Origo, causae, signa, prognostica Pestis, nee non

I

insolentes malignantis Naturae effectus, qui statis temporibus,

I

I caelestium influxuum virtute & efficacia, turn in Elementis; I

turn in epidemijs hominum

animantiumque morbis eluces- I

cunt, vna cum appropriatis remediorum

I
Antidotis noua I

doctrina in lucem eruuntur. I AD ALEXANDRVM VII. I I I

PONT. OPT. MAX. [ornament] ROM^E. Typis Mascardi.

I I

MDCLVIII. SVPERIORVMPERMISSV. [1658]

I

24.7 x 17.5 cm. (9 3/4 x 6 7/8 in.); [16], 252, [16] pp.

Bound in contemporary Italian limp vellum; ink title and shelfmark on spine;
initials; tailpieces; printed signatures, custodes, and marginal glosses; engraving of
thearms of Pope Alexander VII on verso of title page.
The dedicatory epistle to Alexander VII is dated from the Roman College,
22 February 1658. The privilege from Superior General Goswinus Nickel is dated
1 November 1657.

The bubonic plague had ravaged Europe for centuries, but in 1656 it
hit Rome with unusual ferocity.
Within four months 15,000 victims had died.
Pope Alexander VII sponsored hospitals and urged physicians to remain in
Rome and do their best to cure the sick. Because of his vast knowledge and his
fame as a scientist, Kircher was called upon to assist the physicians in their
search for a cure. He worked assiduously alongside the physicians, many of
whom died for their compassion. Armed with the results of his experiments
and observations, Kircher wrote the Scrutinium and published the first edi-
tion two years after the outbreak at Rome. Naturally the book was extremely
popular; it quickly went through three editions and was translated into
German and Dutch.
Kircher begins the work with the pious and ancient assertion that the
plague is the scourge of God for man's sins. But passing quickly from
theology he distinguishes a plague from sporadic and endemic illnesses,
following Hippocrates and Galen. He then discusses the causes of the plague,
listing the traditional possibilities like bad air, putrefying bodies, and
decaying matter. Kircher was perhaps the first to suggest that physicians
themselves may spread the plague through unclean hands and instruments.
Although Kircher expends not a few pages refuting oddities like the astro-
logical causes of plagues and antidotes from the juices of toads, he also
records several significant observations.

33
 Kircher was the earliest of the microscopists and certainly the first to

apply microscopy to medical research. By scrutinizing blood samples from

infected patients he was able under a microcope to detect vermiculi, or tiny
,

animals, invisible to the naked eye. These, he hypothesized, could be the

cause of the plague and could be spread through the air or through the pores
by contact. Clearly, it was not the illusive plague bacillus Pasturella pestis that
Kircher saw, but perhaps much larger bacteria spawned in the unsterile
blood specimens. The actual bacillus was not discovered until 1894
by Kitasato and Yersin with the aid of high-powered microscopes and
advanced staining processes. Nevertheless, Kircher was undoubtedly the
first to advance the theory that infectious diseases are caused by microscopic

living organisms. He suggested further that diseases may be spread not only
by man but also by animals, especially household pets, and by insects,
although he was unaware of the exact carriers of the plague: the rat and its
passenger, the flea. These observations alone give the Scrutinium a seminal
place in the history of medicine. In the conclusion, Kircher gives a chrono-
logical list of the great plagues recorded by man.

The Scrutinium was published again in Leipzig in 1659, 1671, and

1674, and in Graeci in 1740. A Dutch translation was issued in Rotterdam in
1669, and a German translation was published in Augsburg in 1680.

REFERENCES: Brunet III, 668; Caillet II, 365.5792; Clendening 7.8; De Backer
I, 426.16; VII, 286.13; Garrison /Morton 589.5118; Grassse IV, 22; Sommervogel IV,
1057-58.16.

Aztecs depicted worshipping the sun and the moon.

From CEdipus xgyptiacus (Item 10).

34
A mechanical music maker powered by a waterwheel.
From Musurgia universalis (Item 8).

35
16. ATHANASII KIRCHERI I SOC. IESV I DIATRIBE. I De
supra vestes hominum, quam
prodigiosis Crucibus, quae tarn I

Ires alias, non pridem post vltimam incendium Vesuuij I I

Montis NEAPOLI comparuerunt

I [ornament]I ROM/E . I I I

Sumptibus Blasij Deuersin. M. DC. LXI. ISUPERIORVM I

PERMISSV. [1661]

colophon: Romse, Typis Vi talis Mascardi, 1661. I Superi-

orum permifiu.

16.7 x 11.1 cm. (6 5/8 x 4 3/8 in.); [8], 103, [1] pp.

Contemporary marbled paper binding; lettering piece on front cover and on

spine with shelf mark; speckled edges; damp-staining; initials; tailpieces; printed
signatures, custodes, and marginal glosses; 1 fold-out plate; 1 figure.
The dedicatory epistle to Leopold William, archduke of Austria, brother of
emperor Ferdinand III and uncle to Emperor Leopold I, is dated from the
the former
Roman College, 25 March 1661. The privilege from Superior General Goswinus
Nickel is dated 21 January 1661.

This is the first edition of the Diatribe de prodigiosis crucibus, one of the
rarest of Kircher's works. Kircher attempts to explain the uncanny
appearance of crosses on clothing and other objects immediately after an
eruption of Vesuvius. He begins by discussing the history of similar appear-
ances and the nature of miracles in general. God, he says, works by natural
means, and miracles can therefore be explained rationally. Kircher maintains
that the crosses are the result of a mixture of minerals and vapors reacting
with the sun's light upon certain materials. Nevertheless, he argues, the
crosses are a portent from God warning the people to repent. This approach is
an excellent illustration of Kircher's position between the two worlds of the
seventeenth century, the scientific and the orthodox.

A second edition of the Diatribe was published in Rome in 1666. A

German translation appeared in Gaspar Schott's Joco-seriorum naturae et artis

(Wiirzburg, 1666).

36
Engraved title page from vol. 2 of Mundus subterraneus (Item 18).

37
 PROVENANCE: Bookplate of the Fuerstlich Auerspergsche Fideicommis-
bibliothek zu Laybach; "Ex Dono Authoris" (contemporary inscription on inside front
cover); "Wolfg. Engelb. S.R.J. Com. ab Aussperg Cat. Inscr: Anno 1663" (inscription on
title page).

REFERENCES: Brunet III, 667; Clendening 9.12; De Backer I, 426-27.15;

Graesse IV, 21; Sommervogel IV, 1059.18 ("Ce petit volume reimprime
tres rare a ete
par le P. Gaspar Schott, a la suite de son Joco-Seria, pag. 307. Traduit en allemand avec
1'ouvrage du P. Schott").

Kircher's device for supplying fresh air to mine shafts.

From Mutidus subterraneus (Item 18).

38
17. [Tome 1, books 1-7:] ATHANASII KIRCHERI I E Soc.
Jesu I MUNDUS SUBTERRANEUS, I I In XII Libros digestus; I

QUO I Divinum Opificium, mira Ergas-

Subterrestris Mundi I

teriorum Naturae in eo distributio, verbo TravTd|xop4>ov Protei I

Regnum, Universe denique Naturae Majestas & divitiae summa

I I

rerum varietate exponuntur. Abditorum effectuum causae acri

indagine inquisitae demonstrantur; cognitae per Artis & Naturae
I

conjugium ad humanae vitae necessarium usum vario experimento-

I

rium apparatu, necnon novo modo, & ratione applicantur.

I I

TOMUS AD ALEXANDRUM VII. PONT. OPT. MAX.

I. I I I I

[vignette] AMSTELODAMI, Apud JOANNEM I I

JANSSONIUM & ELIZEUM WEYERSTRATEN, Anno M DC I

LXV. Cum Privilegiis. [1665]

[Tome 2, books 8-12:] ATHANASII KIRCHERI E Soc. IESU

I I

MUNDI SUBTERRANEI I TOMUS II

US
. I IN V. LIBROS
DIGESTUS Quibus Mundi Subterranei fructus exponuntur, et I

I quidquid tandem rarum, insolitum, et portentosum in I

foecundo Naturae utero continetur. ante oculos ponitur curiosi I

Lectoris. I Orpheus I
'Os vdeis Ka-ra -rrdvTa |xepin koct\s.oio
k

yevapxot. I O<; SaiTavas fxev 'diravTa, Kai av^etq efAiraXiv olvtods

I Omnes qui partes habitas, mundique Genarcha I Absumis quae
cuncta eadem, quae rursus odauges. I AMSTELODAM1 Apud Joan- ,

nem Janssonium et Elizeum Weyerstraten. 1664.

40.7 x 24 cm. (16 x 9 3/4 in.); [34], 346, [61 pp. (tome 1); [12], 487, [9] pp.
(tome 2).

Tomes 1 and 2 bound together in contemporary blind-stamped stiff-board

vellum, perhaps Dutch; twentieth-century rebacking in goat with vellum and
twentieth-century end-bands; single fillets on covers with moorish center medallion;
initials; tailpieces; printed signatures, custodes, and marginal glosses; numerous
tables, including 18 full-page, 5 double-page, 1 fold -out; maps: 10 in-text, 2 full-page,
5 double-page, 2 fold-out; 4 full-page and 5 double-page engravings; 251 figures, 2 of
which are volvelles.
Tome 1 has an added title page designed by the papal artist Joannes Paul
Schor and engraved by the Dutch engraver Theodor Dirck Matham: ATHANASII
KIRCHERI E Soc. Jesu MUNDUS SUBTERANEUS AMSTERODAMI Apud
I I I I I

Joannem Janssonium et Elizeum Weyerstraten. I Roma:. 1664.

39
 Tome 1 also contains a portrait of Pope Alexander VII, to whom the tome is

dedicated, and Kircher's own portrait with a Latin inscription: Frustra vel Pictor, vel
vates dixerit, HIC EST: Et vultum, et nomen terra scit Antipodum ("Painter and poet
declare in vain 'he's here'; his face and name the ends of the earth revere").
The page to tome 2 was designed by "C. vande Pas" probably Crispin
title —
de Passe II, —
Dutch designer and copper engraver and engraved by his pupil
Anthony Heeres Siourtsma. It includes a miniature portrait of Leopold I.
In tome 1 a privilege from Charles II, "king of England, France and Ireland,"
is dated from Westminster, 15 August 1664. There are also privileges from
Superior General Joannes Paulus Oliva dated from Rome, 19 April 1662, from
Emperor Leopold I dated 28 July 1662, and a printer's privilege from the state of
Holland dated 19 January 1665. In tome 2 the dedicatory epistle to Leopold I is dated
from the Roman College, 1 June 1663.

Kircher believed sunspots were the result of smoke rising from the surface
of the sun.
From Mufidus fiiibterrtmeut (Item 18).

40
 The Mundus subterraneus, perhaps the most popular of Kircher's
works day and the best known in ours, is cited in the letters and works
in his
of such contemporaries as Martin Lister (1639-1712), the zoologist and geolo-
gist; Robert Moray (16087-73), chemist, metallurgist, and first president of the

Royal Society; the philosophers Baruch Spinoza (1632-77) and John Locke
(1632-1704); Henry Oldenburg (1618-77), the secretary of the Royal Society
and the first professional scientific administrator; Nicolaus Steno (1638-86),
the anatomist and geologist; and the physicist Christian Huygens (1629-95).
The basis and impetus for the Mundus subterraneus was Kircher's visit to Sicily
in 1637-38, where he witnessed an eruption of Aetna and Stromboli. He
prefaced the work with his own narrative of the trip, including his spectacu-
lar descent into Vesuvius upon his return to Italy. His observations of these
volcanoes led him to conclude that the center of the earth is a massive internal
fire for which the volcanoes are mere safety valves.
But the work is not solely geologic. Kircher continues with fantastic
speculations about the interior of the earth, its hidden lakes, its rivers of fire,
and its strange inhabitants. Major topics include gravity, the moon, the sun,
eclipses, ocean currents, subterranean waters and fires, meteorology, rivers
and lakes, hydraulics, minerals and fossils, subterranean giants, beasts and
demons, poisons, metallurgy and mining, alchemy, the universal seed and
the generation of insects, herbs, astrological medicine, distillation, and fire-
works. In this work he discloses his experience with palingenesis: he had
allegedly resuscitated a plant from its ashes. Much of the work deals with
alchemy. Kircher ridicules Paracelsus' belief in transmutation and discredits
the work of alchemists in general, complaining about the obscurity of their
writings. This diatribe brought him vicious criticism and abuse later in
life from alchemists who no
longer feared the authority of the Jesuit
order. Kircher does, however, praise the work of the "true chemist," the
chymiotechnicus.

Because Mundus subterraneus is Kircher's textbook of the physical

sciences, it is replete with illustrations. BYU's copy is the first edition. A
second edition was published in Amsterdam in 1678. Portions of the work
were published separately in Graeci in 1739 and 1741. A Dutch translation
was published in Amsterdam in 1682. Portions of the work were translated
into English and published in London in 1669 (Item 18).

PROVENANCE: "Illustrissimi ac Generosis Domini Baronis Gustavi Banear

[?] Caroli filii dono hie liber in meam devenit potestatem Anno Domini 1668-
12 Octobr." (contemporary inscription on inside front cover).

REFERENCES: Brunet III, 667-68; Caillet II, 363.5783; Clendening 10.16

(1668?); De Backer I, 427-28.17; Graesse IV, 21; Sommervogel IV, 1060-63.21.

41
 J

x r*i
agf/AIKi

Frontispiece from Arithmologia (Item 19).

42
18. THE VULCANO'S: OR, Burning and Fire-vomiting
I I I

MOUNTAINS, Famous in the World: With their REMARK-

I I

ABLES. I Collected for the most part out of KIRCHER'S I

Subterraneous World; I And expos'd to more general view in

English, upon the Relation of the late Wonderful and Prodi-
I

gious Eruptions of /ETNA. Thereby to occasion greater admi-

I

rations of the Wonders of Na- ture (and of the God of Nature) I

in the mighty Element of Fire. Res semper aliquid apportat novi.

I I

None sadlier knows the unresisted Ire, Then Thou, Poor London! of I

th' all-raging Fire. But these occasion 'd kindlings are but Blazes,
I I

To th' mighty Burnings, which fierce Nature raises. If then a Town; I

or Hills blaze be so dire; What will be th' last, and Universal Fire?
I I

Licensed and Entred according to Order. London, Printed by I

/. Darby, for John Allen; and are to be sold by him, at the Wliite I

Horse in Wentworth near Bell Lane; And by Benjamin Billingsly at I

the Printing-press in Broad-street near Gresham-Colledg, 1669.

19.8 x 13.6 cm. (7 13/16 x 5 3/8 in.); [10], 68 pp.

Bound in contemporary paper with side-stitching; browning and dust-

stained paper; fore-edge margin has been excessively trimmed, interfering with
pagination and marginalia but not with text; engraved frontispiece; initials; head-

and marginal glosses.

pieces; printed signatures, custodes,
The leaf comprising pp. 65 and 66 is missing. The leaf comprising pp. 67 and
68 has been stitched in and seems to be from a different impress. It contains an
appendix with the story, extracted from Sands's Travels, of the miser Sir Thomas
Gresham (15197-79), who was reformed after hearing a voice from the volcanic
Mount Strombolo; it also includes the errata.

This English translation of portions ofMundus subterraneus (Item 17)

includes only the parts of Kircher's vast treatise that deal specifically with
volcanoes. The book is divided into six parts, discussing in part 1 the subter-
ranean lakes and rivers of fire that supply the volcanoes; in part 2 the
volcanoes themselves in general; in part 3 those of Italy; in part 4 the erup-
tions of volcanoes in general; in part 5 the eruptions in Italy in particular; and,
in part 6, Aetna in particular. The latter includes Kircher's detailed descrip-
tion of Aetna's crater and a chronology of its eruptions. The book closes with
two stories related to volcanoes. The title refers to the great fire of London
which, in 1666, only three years before, had destroyed much of the city.
Doubtless that fire's fury was still vivid in the minds of Londoners and

43
perhaps sparked interest in this description of the even more furious volcanic
fires.

Kircher might or might not have been aware of the publication of this
translation. It is not likely that he had a hand in its publication. The translator

is not named in the work.

REFERENCES: BM 123, 713; NUC 297, 460; Wing II, K624, and HI, V688.

19. ATHANASII KIRCHERI E SOCIETATE IESV

I I

ARITHMOLOGIA I SIVE IDe abditis Numerorum mysterijs I

Qua Origo, Antiquitas

I & fabrica Numerorum exponitur; I

Abditae eorundem proprietates demonstrantur; Fontes super- I

stitionum in Amuletorum fabrica aperiuntur; Denique post I

Cabalistarum, Arabum, Gnosticorum, aliorumque magicas I

impietates detectas, vera I & licita numerorum mystica signifi-

catio I ostenditur. I [device of the Society of Jesus] ROM/E, Ex I

Typographia Varesij. MDCLXV. I SVPERIORVM PERMISSV.

[1665]

24.5 x 17.4 cm. (9 5/8 x 6 7/8 in.); 136 pp.

Bound in late seventeenth- or early eighteenth-century Italian blind-tooled

calf,very similar to and probably in the same workshop as Item 24; gold tooling,
lettering and shelf mark on spine; edges stained red; engraved frontispiece; arms of
Francisco de Nadasd, to whom the work is dedicated, on verso of title page; initials;

printed signatures, custodes, and marginal glosses; numerous tables, 2 fold-out, 1 of

which is in red and black; 1 fold-out chart; figures.
The dedicatory epistle to Francisco de Nadasd (or Nadasti), "a ruler of
Hungary and advisor to the Emperor," is dated from the Roman College, 17 July 1665.
Francisco, a volatile and fiery man, was count of Forgatsch in Hungary. Championing
the cause of his fellow Hungarian nobles, he attempted to regain some of the privi-
leges they had gradually lost to the encroachments of the Hapsburg emperors. In 1666
he led a committee of nobles to petition Leopold I for a diet to consider the plight of
Hungary. He also petitioned that the recently vacated office of Count Palatine be
bestowed upon a certain Hungarian noble. Both petitions were refused. Francisco
went away insulted and incensed, and he vowed to assassinate the emperor. After an
aborted attempt to stab him and a foiled attempt to poison him, Francisco was arrested

44
Matteo Ricci, Italian Jesuit missionary to China.
From China monumentis (Item 20).

45
and executed in 1671. The privilege from Superior General Joannes Paulus Oliva is

dated from Rome, 18 November 1664.

The Arithmologia, one of Kircher's more curious works, is a veritable

gold mine of curiosities: magic formulas, amulets, and symbolic matrices. For
Kircher all knowledge was to some extent bound up in mystery, and this was
particularly true of numerology. The mystical nature of numbers had been
the object of volumes of both Hebraic and Greek treatises, from Pythagoras to
the Cabbala, since antiquity. Kircher did not accept the mysticism uncriti-
cally, however. Indeed, much of the work is dedicated to discrediting com-
mon superstitions about numbers. He begins the book with a speculative
history of the origin of the Greek and Roman numerals; he later gives the
history of the Hebrew and Arabic numerals. Much of the work deals with
the alleged mystical numerology of the Gnostics, Cabbalists, and Neo-
pythagoreans. Kircher is not slow to accuse these groups of superstition and
paganism.
For Kircher, as for most of his contemporaries, the universe was
hierarchical and orderly. He was convinced that that order could be repre-
sented by numbers in a mystical and meaningful way. The work of his
contemporaries Leibniz (1646-1716) and Newton (1642-1726) resulted from
this faith in mathematics and its power to circumscribe the universe. The
Arithmologia, like most of Kircher's works, appears at the juncture between
the mystical numerologies, handed down from antiquity, and modern
mathematics. Yet the gulf between these is not without a bridge, and few
modern mathematicians would reject, without pause, Kircher's (and
Pythagoras') conviction that "all creation is filled with numbers."

REFERENCES: Brunet III, 666; Caillet II, 360.5769; Clendening 8.11;

De Backer I, 428.19; Graesse IV, 21; Sommervogel IV, 1063.22.

46
20. ATHANASII KIRCHERI E Soc. Jesu CHINA I I I

MONUMENTIS, QUA Sacris qua Profanis, Nee non variis

I I I I

NATURE & ARTIS SPECTACULIS, Aliarumque rerum

I I

memorabilium I Argumentis I ILLUSTRATA, I AUSPICIIS I

LEOPOLDI PRIMI, ROMAN. IMPER. SEMPER AUGUSTI,

I I

Munificentifiimi Mecxnatis. A Solis Ortu usque ad Occasu(m)

I I

Laudabile Nomen D(omi)ni [Psalms 112:3] I [ornament with

device of the Society of Jesus] I ANTWERPI/E, I Apud
JACOBUM a MEURS, ANNO M. DC. LXVII. [1667]

colophon: Juxta Exemplar ROM/E, Typis Varesii.

SUPERIORUM PERMISSU.

32.5 x 21.8 cm. (12 13/16 x 8 5/8 in.); [18], 237, [11] pp.

Nineteenth-century diced Russian, full-paneled calf; crude twentieth-

century rebacking; stained edges; portrait of the author with inscription (see Item 17);
initials; tailpieces; printed signatures, custodes, and marginal glosses; numerous
Chinese vocabulary; 5 full-page copper-plate engravings
tables, 10 full-page tables of
of Sanskrit alphabet and elements;
1 fold-out facsimile of Chinese-Syriac inscription

on Sino-Chaldean monument; 1 full-page Chinese inscription; 14 full-page

engravings and woodcuts; 1 fold-out engraving; 41 engravings in text; 21 woodcut
figures, 1 pasted in over engraving; 5 fold-out maps; type fonts include Chinese,
Arabic, Syriac, Estranghelo, Ethiopic, Hebrew, Coptic, and Devanagari.
There is an added engraved title page: ATHANASII KIRCHERI SOC. IESV I

CHINA ILLVST[RATA] AMSTELODAMI Apud IOHANNEM IANSZONIUM

I I a
WAESBERGE et Viduam ELIZEI WEYERSTRAET ANNO MD. C. LXVII. [1667]. I

The dedicatory epistle to the superior general of the Society of Jesus, Joannes
Paulus Oliva, is dated from Rome, 8 December 1666. The privilege had been given by
Oliva two years earlier on 14 November 1664.

China, like Egypt, was to Kircher an ancient and mysterious land,

highly civilized, filledwith strange creatures and unimaginable marvels,
and, above all, having an origin and universality common with all nations.
This work is, China had been
in effect, Kircher's search for that universality.
open to Christian missionaries for only afew decades when Kircher, at 28,
applied to go there. He was refused, but the refusal only whetted his curios-
ity. Over the next 37 years he maintained a voluminous correspondence with

fellow Jesuits in China, gleaning all the information he could from their
letters and journals.

47
 0x
:
I
1
!

Adam Schall, Jesuit missionary to China.

From China monumentis (Item 20).

48
 Most notable among his sources were Johann Adam Schall von Bell
(1591-66), missionary in China from 1622, reviser of the Chinese calendar,
and chief of the Bureau of Mathematics and Astronomy in Peking; Martino
Martini (1614-61), Kircher's former pupil, mathematician of the Chinese
imperial court, and author of the first detailed map and geographic descrip-
tion of China, Novus atlas sinensis (1655); and Johann Grueber (1623-80), who
went to China in 1656, became assistant to Schall, and returned to Rome in
1661. Yet another important source is Michael De Boym (1612-59), a mission-
ary in India from 1643 and in China from 1650. De Boym returned in 1652 to
Europe, where he published his Flora sinensis (1654), a description of China's
flowers, fruits, and animals.
was undoubtedly Matteo Ricci's Commentaries
Kircher's major source
(1615), theaccount of the Jesuit missions in China from their inception in
1582 until Ricci's death in 1610. Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) was one of two
Jesuit missionaries called by the visitor general of the Society, Alexander
Valignano, to open the first Chinese parish within the empire at Macao in
1582. Kircher gleaned most of his information on India and the Sanskrit
language from Heinrich Roth (1620-68), a missionary to India and the first
European scholar of Sanskrit and Indian philosophy, when Roth came to
Rome briefly in 1664.
China illustrata is a compilation of these missionaries' notes and
journals. Kircher readily acknowledges in the preface his debt to his
colleagues in China and India for the information, but the book is liberally
sprinkled with Kircher's own philosophy. Kircher compiled a detailed
and considerably accurate account of Chinese geography, history,
culture, and language, and, as his readers had learned to expect, the book is
filled with delightful engravings illustrating the curious habits of the
Chinese.
The book is divided into six parts. The first discusses the famous
Nestorian inscription, written in Chinese with a portion in Syriac. The monu-
ment was erected by Nestorian missionaries near the city of Hsi-an fu in
A.D. 781, establishing the incursion of Christianity into China as early as the
eighth century. The transcription and transliteration, together with
Father Michael De Boym's translation of the inscription, first printed here by
Kircher, constitute the Chinese vocabulary ever printed in the West. It
first

became the standard study of Chinese until the nineteenth

text for the
century. Kircher believed that the Chinese language was related to Egyptian,
a hypothesis bolstered by alleged similarities in the two writing systems.
The second part gives a history of China and of her introductions to
Christianity. Relying on the Bible, Kircher claims that Ham took his people
from Egypt through Persia and India to the "land of Mogor," where they
settled and founded China. By that means Chinese characters could have
originated from Egyptian hieroglyphics.

49
 Idolatry, the subject of part 3, was considered yet another Egyptian
influence in China, since, as Kircher claims, there were numerous parallels in
the pantheons of the two These influences spread to Japan and
cultures.
India, and it is in the latter country that Kircher suddenly takes a great
interest. He includes a Sanskrit grammar and vocabulary prepared by the
intrepid Jesuit explorer, and the first European to master the Sanskrit lan-
guage, Heinrich Roth. This was the first printing of a Sanskrit grammar and of
the Devanagari script in Europe, and it, like the Chinese vocabulary in the
same work, became the primary source for the study of the language.
Part 4 Kircher devotes to describing China's government, its cities,
—
and its natural wonders mountains, lakes and rivers, plants, animals, and
minerals. Part 5 details China's architectural and mechanical marvels, such as
the great bells of Peking. Finally, in part 6, Kircher returns to the Chinese
language and the origin of its characters.

China illustrata was one of the most popular of Kircher's works.

Within its first year, 1667, it was published in Rome and Antwerp, although

Sommervogel says the latter was really another, inferior Amsterdam edition
by Jacob Muers. Translations appeared in French (Amsterdam, 1670) and
Dutch (Amsterdam, 1668), and portions were translated into English
(London, 1669). BYU's copy of China illustrata is the first edition.

PROVENANCE: Presentation copy to "Wm Rowley Stamforth with the love

of his affectionate mother Elmsleigh-Paigatos, January 26th 1845" (inscription on
flyleaf).

REFERENCES: Brunet III, 666-67 ("il existe deux editions de cet ouvrage,
sous la meme date, et dont l'une est en plus gros caracteres que 1'autre, et renferme des
cartes grav. sur une plus grande echelle; du reste le contenu est le meme"); Caillet II,
361.5773; Clendening 9.14; De Backer I, 428-29.21; Graesse IV, 21; Sommervogel IV,
1063-65.24.

50
Engraved title page from Magneticum naturae regnum (Item 21).

51
21. ATHANASII KIRCHERI I E SOC. IESV. MAGNE- I

TICVM NATVRAE REGNVM I SIVE

I DISCEPTATIO I

PHYSIOLOGICA De triplici in I Natura rerum MAGNETE,

iuxta I triplicem eiusdem Naturae gradum digesto I

INANIMATO I ANIMATO
SENSITIVO Qua Occulta? I I I

prodigiosarum quarundam motionum vires & proprietates, I

quae in triplici Naturae Oeconomia nonnullis in corporibus I

nouiter detectis ob- I seruantur, in apertam lucem eruuntur, &

I

luculentis argumentis, experientia I duce, demonstrantur. I Ad

I Inclytum, & Eximium Virum ALEXANDRVM FABIANVM I

I Noui orbis Indigenam.[ornament] I I Romae. Typis Ignatij de

Lazaris. 1667. Sup. Permissu

22.5 x 16.8 cm. (8 7/8 x 6 5/8 in.); 136 pp.

Bound in full contemporary Italian calf; lettering piece on gold-tooled spine;

speckling on edges; browning paper; initials; tailpieces; printed signatures, custodes,
and marginal glosses.
There is an additional engraved title page: ATHANASII KIRCHERI I

Regnum Naturx magneticum

I in triplici magneteIInanimate) Animato Sensitiuo I I

dispositum.
The dedicatory epistle to Alexander Fabianus, Spanish administrator and
scholar in Mexico, dated from the Roman College, 1 January 1667. The privilege
is

from Superior General Joannes Paulus Oliva is dated 20 February 1667.

The Magneticum naturae regnum contains Kircher's final words on the

principle of magnetism in nature. Much of the work repeats what was said
earlier in his much more extensive Magnes sive de arte magneticum
(Item 4). Kircher discusses the role of magnetism in man (attraction and
repulsion, friendship and hatred, likes and dislikes, sympathy and antipa-
thy), in inanimate nature (attraction and repulsion among the elements,
weight and gravity, the planets, poisons), in animate or vegetative nature
(attraction of heliotropes and selenitropes to the sun and moon, on the use of
roots to cure illnesses), and sensitive nature (magnetic nature of the wind and
of oars, a type of magnet which causes stupor). He asserts that the principle of
attraction and repulsion can explain the most obscure phenomena of physics
and that there is no secret in nature that cannot be penetrated and understood
—
by astute observation an attitude characteristic of his time. This volume is
unusual for its lack of illustrations.

52
 REFERENCES: Brunet III, 667; Caillet II, 362.5782 (number 5781 gives an
Amsterdam edition without date); Clendening 10.15; De Backer I, 429.22; Graesse IV,
21; Sommervogel IV, 1065.25.

x Montis
vksuvii
Prout- ali Authoi c

53
22. [Tome 1, books 1-5:] ATHANASII KIRCHERI £ Soc. I

Jesu ARS MAGNA SCIENDI, In XII Libros Digesta, QUA

I I I I

I NOVA & UNIVERSALI METHODO Per Artificiosum Com I

binationum contextum de omni I re proposita plurimis & prope

infinitis rationibus disputari, omniumque summaria quxdam I

cognitio comparari potest. I AD Augustissimum Rom.

I

Imperatorem I LEOPOLDUM PRIMUM, I Justum, Pium, Feli-

cem. I AMSTELODAMI, APUD JOAN-
[printer's device] I I

NEM JANSSONIUM a WAESBERGE, & Viduam Elizei I

Weyerstraet. Anno M DC LXIX. Cum Privilegiis. [1669]

[Tome 2, books 6-11:] TOMUS II. ARTIS MAGN^E SEU I I I

COMBINATORI/E SCIENDI, QUO Omnia, qua? in I I I

praecedenti Tomo per Regulas & Canones descripsimus, hie ad I

praxin per exempla ad omnes Artes & Scientias

I applicata, I

reducuntur; ESTQUE Practicus & Paradigmaticus omnium

I I

eorum, qux sub qusestionem cadere possunt. I

39.4 x 26 cm. (15 1/2 x 10 13/16 in.); [16], 482, [10] pp. (The engraved title
page to tome 2 has been tipped in and is not included in the pagination, which is
continuous through both tomes).

1 and 2 bound together in full contemporary calf over boards; gilt

Tomes
lettering and gold-tooled fleur aldine on spine with single fillets along bands; gilt
filleted covers; stained edges; browning paper; initials; tailpieces; printed signatures,
custodes, and marginal glosses; replete with tables, 6 double-page; figures, including
1 volvelle; 2 woodcut plates requiring volvelles.

Tome 1 has an additional engraved title page: ATHANASII KIRCHERI Soc.

Jesu IARS MAGNA SCIENDI Sive COMBINATORIA Qua ad omnium Artium I I I

Scientiarumque cognitionem brevi adquirendam, amplissima porta recluditur, I quod uti

Inventum novum est, ita quoque ejusdem subsidio usuque instructus, quilibct, de quavis re

proposita, I infinitis peene rationibus disputare, omniumque summariam quondam cujuslibet

Doctrimx notitiam obtinere potent. I AMSTELODAMI 1669.
Likewise, tome 2: ATHANASII KIRCHERI Soc. Jesu IARTIS MAGN/E
COMBINATORI/E I TOMUS II. PARADIGMATICUS I Quo I Omnes Scientuv, variis
propositis Paradigmatis, per Artis I Regulas & Canones ad praxin exponuntur &
demonstrantur. I AMSTELODAMI I Apud Joannem Janssonium a Waesberge &
Viduam I Elizaei Weyerstraet Anno 1669.
The dedicatory epistle to Emperor Leopold I is undated. Two privileges are
included from Superior General Joannes Paulus Oliva: one for tome 1 , dated 1 Septem-
ber 1665, and a second for tome 2, dated 19 July 1666.

54
The saying of Plato "Nothing is finer than to know all things" is engraved on
the throne of Sophia, Divine Wisdom. From Ars magna sciendi (Item 22).

55
 Ars magna sciendi is Kircher's elaboration and adaptation of the
"Combinatoric Art" of Ramon Lull, the thirteenth-century Majorcan philoso-
pher. Kircher attempts nothing less than the categorization of all knowledge
under the nine ideal attributes or dignities of God. These attributes, he
argues, are the superstructure of the universe, the pattern for all creation. The
universe, be comprehended in toto, must be organized in the mind
if it is to
according to the same pattern. The modus operandi of the art is, therefore, to
move, like Plato's dialectic, from universals to particulars. Kircher conse-
quently designs a system and method for teaching all disciplines in the style
of the encyclopedic movement. However, like Lull's Ars demonstrativa, the
emphasis of Kircher's work is not pedagogical. Kircher advocates an ambi-
tious scientific method, a type of logic applicable to all branches of learning,
a method of finding truth. Much of the book applies the "Combinatoric Art"
to a vast variety of disciplines from theology to medicine to logic, rhetoric,
and debate.
The Ars magna sciendi represents the seventeenth-century search for a
universal language that would allow scientists and philosophers to describe
and circumscribe all knowledge into a unified system. The Lullian Art was at
the center of the search. Philosophers realized then, as they do now, that
common language is inadequate for discovering and conveying truth and
that a language patterned after the basic structure of the universe could be
the key to the exact ordering and verification of all knowledge. For the sake of
facility and objectivity, words would have to be replaced by symbols or
some type of notation. Kircher devised his own universal language of sym-
bols in his earlier work Polygraphia nova (1663), but it attracted little attention.
This search for a universal language is also a consideration in Kircher's
Arithmologia (Item 19). The encyclopedist and mathematician Leibniz
(1646-1716), possessed by this same desire for a pure symbolic language,
studied Lull avidly. Leibniz never found the universal language, but he did
discover calculus, the symbolic language with which scientists have most
nearly circumscribed the known universe.

A second copy of the Ars magna sciendi is bound with Sphinx

mystagoga (see Item 27). It lacks the added title page but includes a fine
portrait of Leopold I not in the first copy. The second copy is, in all other
respects, similar to the first.

PROVENANCE: "Ex-Libris Alberti Vialis Bibliotheca Kircheriana" (book-

plate).

REFERENCES: Brunet III, 666; Caillet II, 360.5771; Clendening 10.17;

De Backer I, 429-30.23; Graesse IV, 21; Sommervogel IV, 1066-67.28.

56
Engraved title page from Principis christiani archetypon politicum (Item 24).

57
23. ATHANASII KIRCHERI I e Soc. Jesu I LATIUM. I ID
EST, I NOVA & PARALLELA I LATH turn VETERIS I turn
NOVI I DESCRIPTIO. QUA
Quxcunque vel Natura, vel
I I

Veterum Romanorum Inge- nium admiranda effecit, Geographico-

I

Historico- I Physico Ratiocinio,juxta rerum gestarum, Temporum- I

que seriem exponitur & I enucleatur. I [printer's device] I

AMSTELODAMI, Apud JOANNEM JANSSONIUM a I

WAESBERGE, & Hceredes ELIZEI WEYERSTRAET. Anno

I

M DC LXXI. Cum Privilegiis. [1671]

37.6 x 25 cm. (14 13/16 x 9 13/16 in.); [24], 263, [9] pp.

Rebound vellum; author's name in ink on

in twentieth-century stiff-board
spine; stained edges; browning paper; portrait of Pope Clement X; initials; tailpieces;
printed signatures, custodes, and marginal glosses; 2 full-page and 5 double-page
engraved maps; engraved illustrations: 10 full-page, 8 double-page, 1 fold-out;
19 engraved and woodcut figures.
There is an additional title page engraved by Romeyn de Hooge (or Hooch),
Dutch painter and engraver known for his lively and original engravings, nephew of
painter Pieter de Hooch: ATHANASII KIRCHERI E Soc. Jesu LATIUM. Cui par I I I

nihil est, nihil secundum Lipsius. AMSTEL/EDAMI, Apud Joannem Janssonium a

I I

Waesberge I et Heeredes Elizoei Weyerstraet. 1671.

The dedicatory epistle to Pope Clement X is dated from the Roman College,
1 May 1670, and the privilege from Superior General Joannes Paulus Oliva is dated
17 April 1668.

From 1635 death Kircher resided in Rome, researching,

until his
teaching, writing, and exploring the
Italian countryside. Latium is a compila-
tion of his topographical impressions of Rome and its environs. Kircher's
fascination with Italy, however, was not merely topographical and scientific,
but also, and above all, historical. For him Italy was antiquity itself; it repre-
sented the history of mankind back to Noah, under whom Kircher claims it
was first colonized. "Latium" is, in fact, the ancient name of the area from
Rome southward to Capua.
Kircher reveals his avid regionalism in the dedication to Pope
Clement X, in which he descibes Latium as "the primaeval seat and colony of
the earliest mortals, the realm of Saturn, the native home of great heroes,
kings, of human wisdom, knowledge, and
and Caesars, the fount and origin
Latin erudition." Latium guide to the regions around Rome and north-
is a
ward into Etruria, to its landmarks, villas, and towns, both ancient and
modern. The work contains several fine engravings of baroque villas.

58
 Sommervogel mentions an earlier edition (Rome, 1669); no publisher
is given. There is no other reference to such an edition.

PROVENANCE: Bookplate with inscription "BL"; "Carmeli Araubingani

1746" (inscription on title page).

REFERENCES: Brunet III, 667; Caillet II, 361.5777; Clendening 10.18;

De Backer I, 430.24; Graesse IV, 21; Sommervogel IV, 1067.29.

24. PRINCIPIS CHRISTIANI I ARCHETYPON I POLI-

TICUM SIVE SAPIENTIA REGNATRIX;
I I I I QUAM I Regiis
instructam documentis ex antiquo I Numismate I HONORATI
JOANNII I CAROLI V. IMP. & PHILIPPI II. I Aulici. I Caroli
Hispaniarum Principi Magistri nee non Oxo- mensi Ecclesise I

Antistitis. Symbolicis obvelatim integumentis, Reip. Literar.

I

evolutam exponit ATHANASIUS KIRCHERUS e Soc. JESU.

I I

I [ornament] AMSTELODAMI, Apud JOANNEM

I I

JANSSONIUM a WAESBERGE. Anno 1672.

colophon: AMSTELODAMI, I Excudebat Joannes Janssonius

aWaesberge, I ANNO 1672 Cum Privileges S. C. Majestatis.
I I ET
I Ordinum HolJ. & West-Friside.

25.7 x 19.8 cm. (10 x 7 3/4 in.); [17], 235, [1 1 pp.

Bound in late seventeenth- or early eighteenth-century Italian blind-tooled

calf, very similar to and probably from the same workshop as Item 19; twentieth-
century rebacking; gold tooling and lettering on spine; edges stained red; initials;

printed signatures, custodes, marginal glosses; 10 engraved and woodcut figures;

1 fold-out chart; 1 full-page engraving.
Book 1 has an additional engraved title page: SPLENDOR et GLORIA I

DOMUS JOANNI/E I Descripta ab ATHANASIO KIRCHERO Soc. Jes. I

Amstelodami. Apud Joannem Janfionium a Waesberge. 1672. cum Privilegiis. The book
also contains an engraved portrait of Antonius Joannius de Centellas.
Book 2 has an additional title page: LIBER SECUNDUS, SIVE SPLEN- I I

DOR & GLORIA DOMUS JOANNI^E, QUO Turn Viri gestarum rerum gloria
I I I I

praestantes, turn potissimum Maximum ejus Ornamentum, & grande

I Decus I I

HONORATUS JOANNIUS Oxomensis Ecclesia? Antistes Nee non CAROLI

I I I

PRINCIPIS HISPANIARUM quondam Magister, unanimi Hispaniae sui

I eevi I

59
 —

Scriptorum conspiratione, I Meritis Laudibus Literario Orbi ad I exemplum proponi-

tur.Book 2 also contains the engraved portrait and arms of Honoratus Joannius.
The dedication to Antonius joannius, marchio of Centellas and great nephew
of Honoratus Joannius, whom this work is about, is dated from the Roman College,
1 September 1666. The privilege from Superior General Joannes Paulus Oliva is dated

20 November 1669.

The Archetypon politicum is Kircher's handbook of the virtues proper

to a prince; it is also an encomium of Honoratus Joannius (1507-66), who,
according to Kircher, embodied those virtues.
In book 1, Kircher discusses the characteristics of the ideal prince and
of good government. Kircher interprets various symbols inscribed on a coin
stamped with the effigy of Honoratus Joannius. The symbols, such as
Honoratus' aquiline nose, the olive tree, the serpent, and the Aeolian harp,
are all made to represent different virtues characteristic of Honoratus and
proper for a prince. Kircher draws on his store of Egyptian hieroglyphs to
interpret the coin's inscription. He even sets up Egypt itself as a paradigm of
proper rule. In the final two parts of the first book, Kircher discusses the vices
of a bad ruler and the advantages of good economic counsel.
Book 2 gives a history of the Joannius family, tracing the family's
roots back to Constantinople and the eastern emperor, or basileus, Michael
Joannes Balbus, or Michael I, who was crowned emperor of the Eastern
Roman Empire in 820. The Joannius family, according to Kircher, continued
on the imperial throne at least through the reign of Calo Joannes in 1357.
Kircher then traces the migrations of branches of the family to Padua, Naples,
Catalonia, France, and Majorca. Honoratus' branch, according to Kircher,
moved to Valencia, where his ancestors became trusted counselors to the
king. According to Kircher, they then moved to Naples, where the family
remained as regents.
In book 3 Kircher narrates Honoratus' life. Honoratus, says Kircher,
rose by the fame of his vast learning to become, in 1554, counselor to
Charles V, king of Spain and Holy Roman emperor, and tutor to Charles' son
Philip. Near the end of his life, Honoratus was elected bishop of Castile.
Kircher concludes with an account of Honoratus' learning, political experi-
ence, and death.
The Archetypon politicum is interesting not so much for its content
the history is unreliable —as for its noble and lucid style. Appended to the
work are various poems in praise of Honoratus, composed in Latin, Greek,
Hebrew, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Arabic, Syriac, Aramaic, Samari-
tan, and Coptic —
an impressive display of Kircher's virtuosity as a linguist.

60
 BYU's copy of Archetypon politician is the second edition. The first

edition was published in Amsterdam in 1669.

REFERENCES: Brunet III, 668; De Backer I, 430.24; Graesse IV, 22; Sommer-
vogel IV, 1068.30.

The coming of the Flood.

From Area Noe (Item 26).

61
25. ATHANASII KIRCHERI ESOC.JESU. PHONURGIA I I

I NOVA I SIVE I Conjugium Mechanico-physicum ARTIS & I

NATVR^E I PARANYMPHA PHONOSOPHIA I Concin-

natum; qua I IUNIVERSA SONORUM NATURA, PROPRIE-
TAS, VIRES effectuumq. prodigiosorum I Causae, nova & multiplici
experimentorum exhibitione enu- cleantur; Instrumentorum Acusti- I

corum, Machinarumq. ad Naturae prototypon adaptandarum, turn I

ad sonos ad remotiflima spatia propagandas, turn in abditis domo- I

rum receflibus per occultioris ingenii machinamenta clam paldmve

sermo- cinandi modus & ratio traditur, turn denique in Bellorum
I

tumul- tibussingularishujusmodiOrganorumUsus,& praxis per

I I

novam Phonologiam describitur. [title vignette] CAMPIDON/E I I

I Per RUDOLPHUM DREHERR. M. DC. LXXIII. [1673] ANNO

32 x 22 cm. (12 9/16 x 8 5/8 in.); [42], 229, [16] pp.

Rebound in twentieth-century cloth case with leather spine; original contem-

porary calf covers pasted to cloth, blind-tooled with distinctive heart-shaped pattern
framed in several borders of pointille typical of the seventeenth century and stamped
"1687"; gauffred edges; portrait of Leopold I; initials; head- and tailpieces; printed

signatures, custodes, and marginal glosses; numerous woodcut figures; 16 engraved

illustrations; 2 full-page engravings.
There is an additional engraved title page designed by Felix Cheurier:
ATHANASII I KIRCHERI E Soc. IESV
I I PHONVRGIA Admirandorum
I
pier) I

Sonos effectuum Productrix IAd Lcopoldum R.I. Sempier) Augustu(m).

I I

Kircher dedicated this book to Emperor Leopold I. The dedicatory epistle is

dated from the Roman College, 12 February 1673. The privilege from Superior General
Joannes Paulus Oliva is dated 1 December 1672.

Phonurgia nova is, in part, Kircher's response to Sir Samuel Morland

(1625-95), a fellow of the Royal Society of London, who claimed, in a paper
published in the January 1672 Philosophical Transactions, the recently
established circular of the Society, to have invented the megaphone. Numer-
ous testimonies from Kircher's admirers, such as James Alban Gibbs and
Gaspar Schott, are appended to the work defending Kircher's claim as the
inventor of the tuba stentorophonica, as Morland called it. Kircher had indeed
written extensively on the device in his Musurgia (Item 8) and had been using
the "speaking trumpet" for years at the shrine of Mentorella to call people to
services.He therefore had a legitimate claim to its invention.
The Phonurgia treats the science and applications of sound
amplification and echoes. It was the first book published in Europe devoted

62
 Noah's descendants.
From Area Noe (Item 26).

63
 .

entirely to acoustics. Kircher had discussed acoustics extensively in his

Musurgia, and much of the Phomirgia repeats the work done there. As he did
in the Musurgia, Kircher here describes and illustrates many bizarre and
curious inventions like talking statues, an Aeolian tuba and lyre, eavesdrop-
ping devices, and hordes of odd-shaped trumpets.

The work appeared in a German translation in 1684. A facsimile

edition was produced in New York in 1966.

PROVENANCE: Bookplate of Dr. Bettman.

REFERENCES: Brunet III, 668; Caillet II, 364.5789; Clendening 11.19;

De Backer I, 430.28; Graesse IV, 22; Sommervogel IV, 1068.31

The magic lantern, similar to the modern projector.

From Ars magna lucis et umbrae (Item 7).

64
26. ATHANASII KIRCHERI eSoc.Jesu I I ARCA NOE, I IN
I TRESLIBROS DIGESTA, QUORUM I I I I. De rebus qua? ante
Diluvium, I II. De Us, qua? ipso Diluvio ejusque duratione, III. De I

iis, qua? post Diluvium a Noemo gesta sunt, Quae omnia nova I

Methodo, I NEC NON Summa Argumentorum varietate, expli-

I

& demonstrantur. [printer's device! AMSTELODAM1,

cantur, I I

IApud JOANNEM JANSSONIUM a WAESBERGE. ANNO I

M DC LXXV. Cum Privilegiis. [1675]

38.1 x 25 cm. (15 x 9 3/4 in.); [18], 240, [16] pp.

contemporary calf binding, rebacked in nineteenth century with corners

Full
and stepped fret on spine; marbled end-sheets, perhaps French,
repaired; gilt lettering
added when rebacked; edges sprinkled in red; browning paper; portrait by C. Decker
of Charles II of Spain, to whom the work is dedicated; initials; tailpieces; 1 full-page
and 2 fold-out maps; 1 fold-out, 4 full-page, 10 double-page engravings; 5 full-page
animal names in
tables, including a table of various languages and a chronological
table of the Flood;numerous engraved and woodcut illustrations, especially fine
woodcuts of beasts and birds with descriptions, most of common animals, some of
imaginary creatures such as the mermaid, unicorn, and gryphon; 1 woodcut illustra-
tion tipped in.
The work includes an additional engraved title page: ATHANASII KIRCH-
ERI J.
I ARCA NOE Magna Remm Varietate explicata. Cum Privilegijs
S. I I I I I

AMSTELODAMI Apud JOANNEM JANSSONIUM a WAESBERGE. Anno. 1675.

I

The dedication is dated from the Roman College, 24 June 1673, and the
privilege from Superior General Joannes Paulus Oliva is dated 20 November 1669.

Draco Helvetica biped el alatus

65
 Area Noe is Kircher's fanciful and speculative elucidation of the
biblical story of the Flood. Kircher figures such specifics as the year of the
Flood, the time from the first raindrop until Noah stepped out on dry land,
the dimensions and shape of the ark (considered symbolic of the human body
bearing the soul), the materials the ark was made of, where the various
animals were placed, which animals would have been excluded, where the
ark landed, and where everyone dispersed after the Flood. The book is a
fascinating and delightful piece of imaginative exegesis, filled with curious
speculations. Kircher applies all of his erudition to the work; yet the tone of
the Area Noe is half-playful. Of all of Kircher's works, this one would most
delight a child, and it is fitting that the book was dedicated to Charles II, the
king of Spain, who was only twelve years old when the book was published.

PROVENANCE: "Ecole libre a Villefranche, N. D. de Mongre" (stamp on

title page); "Bibl. Mongr." (lettering on spine).

REFERENCES: Brunet III, 666; Caillet II, 360.5768; De Backer I, 430.26;

Graesse IV, 20-1; Sommervogel IV, 1068-69.33.

66
27. ATHANASII KIRCHERI I e Societ. Jesu, I SPHINX
MYSTAGOGA, DIATRIBE HIEROGLYPHICA, Qua
I Sive I I I

Mumiae, ex Memphiticis Pymmidum adytis erutse, & non ita pridern I

in Galliam transmissae, juxta veterum I Hieromystarum mentem,

intentionemque plena fide ,
I & exacta exhibetur I INTERPRETA-
TIO. I Ad I Inclytos, abstrusiorumque Cognitionum peritia
instru- I ctissimos Galliae Philologos directa. I [device] I AM-
STELODAMI, Ex I Officina JANSSONIO-WAESBERGIANA. I

Anno MDCLXXVI. [1676]

37.3 x 26.2 cm. (14 5/8 x 10 3/8 in.); [20], 72, [6] pp.

Twentieth-century calf-skin facsimile binding; original calf-skin covers, per-

haps contemporary; lettering-piece on spine; damp-staining, some browning; initials;
printed signatures, custodes, and marginal glosses; engraved frontispiece showing 2
sarcophagi; numerous woodcut illustrations, 2 fold-out; some engraved illustrations.
The work includes a half-title page: SPHINX MYSTAGOGA, SIVE I I I

DIATRIBE HIEROGLYPHICA DE MUMIIS. There is an added title page engraved

I

by C. Decker: De CCEMITERIIS; sive ADYTIS /EGYPTIORUM Veterum.

I I I

The work is dedicated to Camillus de Neufville, archbishop of Lyons, the

dedicatory epistle to whom is dated from Rome, 25 December 1675. The privilege
from Johannes Paulus Oliva, the superior general, is dated 2 December 1673.

In 1672 a sarcophagus was discovered in Egypt and brought to

Lyons by a Mssr. De Four, who wrote Kircher a letter, dated from Lyons,
15 June 1673, asking him to interpret the inscriptions found on the sarcopha-
gus and on the mummy's wrappings. Kircher's reply is dated from Rome,
14 August 1673. Both letters were published in the preliminary pages to this
work.
Kircher published his researches on this sarcophagus and others in
this, his final book on Egyptology, the Sphinx mystagoga. This work, like
Kircher's other Egyptian treatises, with arcane curiosities. Kircher
is filled

includes sections on Egyptian burial practices, metempsychosis, and reincar-

nation. He also appends his interpretations of hieroglyphs inscribed on
various amulets and stellae.

This copy of Sphinx mystagoga is bound with a second copy of

Ars magna sciendi, comprising pages [16], 482, [10] (cf. Item 22).

REFERENCES: Brunet III, 668; Caillet II, 365.5793; Clendening 11.21;

De Backer I, 431.30; Graesse IV, 22; Sommervogel IV, 1069.34.

67
28. [Partl:]TARIFFA I KIRCHERIANA I ID EST I INVEN-
TVM AVCTHORIS NOVVM I I Expeditd, & mird arte combinatd
methodo, I uniuersalem Geometrix, & Arithmeti- I ex Practica
Summam continens. I [title vignette] I
Ev jr\ Movd8i TrdvTa, kcu kv
Ttp Tpr/wva) I TrdvTa rrjq reoopeTpiaq, Kai rf)s Api|3pT|Ti- I ktjs
tippvra JVlvCTTTipta. I Must/Eria. Plato in Tim. ROMAE, Sumpti- I

bus Nicolai Angeli Tinassij 1679. I SVPERIORVM PERMISSV.

[Part 2:] TARIFFA KIRCHERIANA SIVE Mensa Pythago-
I I I

ricaexpansa, I Ad Matheseos quesita accommodata per quin- I

que columnas, quarum numeri in fronte I sunt multiplicantes, &

in prima columna dicuntur multiplicand!. I R. Q. C. ubicunque
occurrunt significant I Radices, Quadrata, & Cubos in tra- I uersa
numerorum serie. [ornament] ROM/E, M. DC. LXXIX. Typis,
I I I

& Sumptibus Nicolai Angeli Tinassij. SVPERIORVM I

PERMISSV. [1679]

15.1 x 11.2 cm. (5 15/16 x 4 3/8 in.); 122], 316, [6] pp. (part 1); [406] pp. (part 2).

Bound contemporary limp vellum; ink title and shelf mark on spine;
in
trimmed edges; printed signatures and custodes; tables; numerous woodcut
initials;

illustrations; 24 plates; music; part 2 composed entirely of mathematical tables; third

preliminary leaf out of sequence.
Part 2 has an additional title page: TARIFFA I KIRCHERIANA. I [title

vignette] I ROM/E, M. DC. LXXIX. I Typis, & Sumptibus Nicolai Angeli Tinassij. I

Superiorum Permissu.
The dedication is to Livius Odescalchi, duke of Caerae, in southern Italy,
and nephew of Pope Innocent XI (Benedetto Odescalchi), and is dated 27 July 1679.

The Tariffa, perhaps the rarest of all Kircher's works and his least
characteristic, is entirely mathematical. It treats primarily geometrical figures
and simple trigonometry. The work is organized in the traditional format for

mathematical works, with problems, propositions, and proofs. The term

tariffa was used in Kircher's day for compilations of tables used by naviga-

tors "from which valuable knowledge might be had without labor," but, as is
explained in the preliminary pages, Kircher titled his book Tariffa "not only
because valuable knowledge might be had, but because one may understand
[from it] the universal art of mathematical computation."
A Greek encomium to Kircher by Ioannes Theodorus Fritzer
Trevirensis, Kircher's pupil and the alleged editor of this work, is included in
the preliminary pages. The dedication and preface are signed by Benedictus

68
 —

oJciUiC Jv bu'coauplMOs ocj coujfreriJ, ouJonL

dcccilj en aencrat lej earaclexes oes homines,

Jclon ie larvz dcUuu na/sjanee } el Juivant U/t

i
jmpxejjiotvc mi' iuz TecoivenL oe la volition- ou

\uebcatve le JUooiamic
'

L'eji Le^oJere-. fCl/lllj aid a oblnvi. le mamucril

I
aui cioiLeczit en fanaue. Covifiej j( ih ^trabuiLen
[ Jzancaiet, ~fne?i a /ail iJtcjenL ait a la perjonne

I qui a fail faixe cc<r ufanenc/r en~euivre~ Gt baaiu.

!
ilj/iofoaue convienl .out , auci^ue on nc vuijje

van. 'tabuu unc connaujance _ amiri- paxmite Jiuj

i I t
err iiicueL que Juu utuineme* o ctjlxoloaie

nuteeiaz'u?
J
fail ex urea Suu ehaque - pru/onnej

Cefjcnjc.n _ eilej contienncnt . lift- loru) oe venleL

aiLxaueCter? on -doit avoiv ajjes. oe co/iA'anee —

I-
u'n— —m " ' * i»———— ———————
Title page from the proof copy of Les hieroglyphs (Item 30).

69
de Benedictis, professor of mathematics at Rome Kircher's pseudonym. —
Thisis the only work published by Kircher pseudonymously.

PROVENANCE: "Dono fatto al P. Pro[vin]ciale per gli Scolastici" (contem-

porary inscription on inside front cover); bookplate of Giorgio Fanan; stamp of the
Bibliotheca Scholastica Theologica of the Roman College on title page.

REFERENCES: Brunet III, 669; Clendening 12.24; De Backer 1, 431.31; Graesse

IV, 22; Sommervogel IV, 1070.37.

29. PHYSIOLOGIA KIRCHERIANA EXPERIMEN- I I

TAL^, QUA SUMMA ARGUMENTORUM MULTI-

I I I

TUDINE & VARIETATE Naturalium rerum scientia per I

experimenta Physica, Mathematica, Medica, Chymica,

I

Musica, Magne- tica, Mechanica comprobatur atque stabilitur.

I

IQUAM EX VASTIS OPERIBUS Ad'". Rev P. ATHANASII

I I
dl
.

KIRCHERI extraxit, & in huncordinem per classes redegit Romse,

I I

Anno M. DC. LXXV. JOANNES STEPHANUS KESTLERUS I

Alsata, Authoris discipulus, & in re litteraria assecla, & coadju-

I

tor. [printer's device]

I AMSTELODAMI, Ex Officind I I

JANSSONIO-WAESBERGIANA. Anno M D C LXXX. [1680] I

32 x 22 cm. (12 3/4x8 1 /2 in.); [8], 248, [8] pp.

Unbound; traces of cloth on end-bands, original binding perhaps northern

European; has been bound more than once; stained edges; head margin excessively
trimmed but does not interfere with text; initials; tailpieces; printed signatures,
custodes, and marginal glosses; numerous woodcut illustrations; 3 engraved illustra-
tions.
There is an additional engraved title page: PHYSIO- LOGIAI I KIRCHERI-
ANA I Experimentalis I per I
Joannem Stepha- I
num Kestlerum I
conscripta. I

AMSTEL/EDAMI. I Apud JANSSONIO-WAESBERGIOS. Anno 1680.

The work is dedicated to Cardinal Nithardus, the dedicatory epistle to whom
is dated from Rome, 15 October 1675.

This work, edited by one of Kircher's pupils, Johann Stephan Kestler,

is and experiments across the entire
a codification of Kircher's observations
spectrum of his researches in physics. Naturally there are large sections on
light and shadow, magnetism, acoustics, and music; but there are also

70
experiments and observations in hydrolics, alchemy, and a myriad of other
topics. This compendium was perhaps a response to entreaties from Kircher's
fellow scientists, who appreciated his keen observations and experiments but
did not care to wade through some 40 volumes to glean them. The book is an
example of what Kircher's writings could have been like at the hands of a
good editor. Kircher died the year this book was published, and it is uncertain
to what extent he was involved in its publication. The Physiologia is not only a
measure of Kircher's scientific curiosity and the vast range of his scientific
researches, but also a barometer of his age, a catalogue of the scientific
concerns of his time.

PROVENANCE: "Ad Bibliotheca Can. Reg. Lat. in Zeysberg" (contempo-

rary inscription on title page).

REFERENCES: Brunet III, 669; Caillet II, 365.5796; Clendening 13.26;

Garrison /Morton 80.580 ("Includes the first recorded experiment in hypnotism in
animals").

30. Table des hierogliphes des Egiptiens, ou sont I decrits en

general les caracteres des hommes, I selon le terns de leur naissance, et

suivant les I jmpressions qu'ils reqoivent de la position oil I setrouve

le Zodiaque I Cest le Pere Kiriti, qui a obtenu le manuscrit I qui etoit
ecrit en langue Copthe,jl I' a traduit en I
franqais, et n' en a fait present
qu a la personne I qui a fait faire ces planches en cuivre Cet habile I

Astrologue convient que, quoique on ne puisse I pas etablir une

connaissance aussi parfaite sur I Ces tables que sur un theme
d'astrologie I judiciaire, fait expres sur chaque personne; I

Cependan(t) elles contiennent un fond de verite I auxquelles on doit

avoir asses, de confiance. [late seventeenth century]

25.1 x 17.2 cm. (9 7/8 x 6 15/16 in.); [1 1 leaf, [351 leaves of plates (individual
plates numbered in manuscript).

Bound in blue paste paper over boards; browning paper; single leaves sewn
with overcast stitching; 36 engraved plates, some printed on verso of leaves; contem-
porary manuscript corrections in pen and pencil.

71
 LA* hoHtHteavrc u+t aiu ferocc, a.rheuat-Juu u*i~l*oco

Cioi 1C/U/.&S

An engraved plate with manuscript corrections.

From the proof copy of Table des hierogliphes des Egiptiens (Item 30).

72
 The Table des hierogliphes is a curious work comprising 36 engraved
plates featuring symbolic representations of Egyptian mythological charac-
ters. Each plate has an engraved caption giving the name of the character in

Roman letters and Coptic and a brief description of the character's attributes.
The plates are alleged to have been based on a Coptic manuscript discovered
by Kircher, who translated it into French and delivered it "only to the person
who had these copperplates made" ("n'en a fait present qu'a la personne qui
a fait faire ces planches en cuivre"). It cannot be ascertained whether these
plates were meant to be part of a larger work on Coptic or to be published as
they are.
This proof copy of the extremely rare work contains corrections in
manuscript of the Coptic type throughout, as well as manuscript notes in the
bottom margin. It is uncertain whether the corrections are in Kircher's hand
or in that of one of his pupils: it is, however, likely that the editor was familiar
with Coptic. It is equally uncertain whether Kircher was involved in this
work at all or whether it was published in his lifetime.

REFERENCES: Caillet II, 365.5794 ("Tres curieux et tres rare ouvrage

entierement et nai'vement grave en taille douce et comprenant un titre et 35 pi.").

31. Table des hierogliphes des Egiptiens, oil sont I decrits en

general les caracteres des hommes, I selon le terns de leur naissance, et
suivant les I la position ou
jmpressions quits reqoivent desetrouve I

leZodiaque C'estlePereKirker,quiaobtenulemanuscrit quietoit

I I

ecrit en langue Copthejl Ya traduit en franqais, et n'en a fait present I

qua la personne qui a fait faire ces planches en cuivre Cet habile
I I

Astrologue convient que, quoique on ne puisse I pas etablir une

connaissance aussi parfaite sur I Ces tables que sur un theme
d'astrologie I judiciaire, fait expres sur chaque personne; I Cependant
elles contiennent un fond de verite I auxquelles on doit avoir asses, de
confiance. [late seventeenth century]

26.8x18 cm. (10 1/2x7 in.); [1] leaf, [36] leaves of numbered plates.

Bound in red paper wrapper; browning paper; single leaves sewn with
overcast stitching; 36 engraved plates.

73
 This later impress of Table des hierogliphes includes all of the corrections
made inmanuscript in the previous impress (Item 30). Again, the book
provides no clue to the purpose of the plates, their provenance, or whether
Kircher really had a hand in their printing. This impress, at least, was done
with much more care than the previous: there are no plates on the verso of
leaves, and Kircher's name, spelled Kiriti on the title page of the previous
impress, is corrected to Kirker.

PROVENANCE: "Couchoud 3e(m)" (contemporary inscription on flyleaf).

REFERENCES: (See Item 30).

74
Friends of the Brigham Young University Newsletter
Number 33, 1989
Published by the Friends
Harold B. Lee Library, Provo, Utah 84602