Man of Misconceptions : The Life of an Eccentric in an Age of Change (9781101597033)

by Glassie, John

  To Kircher, this “miraculous magnet of poisons” was a new piece of evidence in a larger argument that deserved more than a mention in his book on China. A public reaffirmation of his magnetic philosophy was in order. As he wrote in the resulting Magnetic Kingdom of Nature, also published in 1667, “I think that the immutable force of nature implanted in particular things which does not proceed from manifest or elemental qualities ought to be called magnetism.”

  Whenever invisible forces were at work, he claimed, magnetism was at work. Magnetism is “the same thing which is called occult by some, or the instrument of divine potency by the Hebrews, or the hidden form operating in all things by others; some call it the sympathetic and antipathetic quality. But I believe it should be called magnetism, since in truth all energy existing in things of this kind works according to the analogy of the lodestone, that is, attraction and repulsion.”

  A modern academic writes that Kircher “ignited wide publicity about this wonder and its medical powers” and became “the leading advocate for the efficacy of the new therapy.” Robert Boyle would conduct trials. Francesco Redi would, too.

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  ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, Kircher’s notoriety grew, and his publishers in Amsterdam had no qualms about trying to capitalize on it. China Illustrated, for example, which was in fact copiously illustrated, was meant to feed European curiosity for more reliable information about the culture behind gunpowder, paper, porcelain (or “china”), and the parasol. Was it true, for instance, that Chinese physicians could cure sickness without bloodletting? Readers looked to someone of Kircher’s stature to augment their fairly paltry knowledge of China with his patented blend of virtually everything that was interesting and important to understand.

  First among these things, as he explained it, was that the lands of the East were originally settled and populated by Egyptians after the Great Flood. Kircher believed the Egyptian roots of Chinese culture could clearly be seen in its caste system and in its penchant for “mystic temples,” but most obviously in the written language, the hieroglyphics, of the Chinese. The Chinese also honored the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus, though they called him Confucius. And they worshipped the Egyptian goddess Isis, only they called her Pussa. (In Japan, Kircher claimed, they worshipped a male version called Fombom.)

  The goddess Pussa on a lotus, from China Illustrated

  Drawn primarily from the reports of missionaries who had been traveling to the East since the 1570s, China Illustrated didn’t limit itself to China. Hence the section on the use of the snake stone, which Kircher attributed primarily to the Brahmans in India. But there was no shortage of fascinating things to note about the Chinese empire itself, which stretched from the tropics to the “cold and frozen northern zones.” “It is so large that you can’t find a more populous nation anywhere on earth,” he reported, estimating the figure to be around two hundred million, “not counting the royal ministers, eunuchs, women, and slaves.”

  Interesting creatures of the East included the “fast cow” (the rhinoceros), the “marine horse” (the hippopotamus), and various species of ape, which Kircher noted were very much like humans: “Except for the foulness of their bottoms you would scarcely believe they were animals.”

  There were many beneficial roots and herbs and aromatic oils and woods, as well as natural curiosities. There was a river in Quandong that was supposed to turn blue in autumn and a rose that was supposed to change color twice a day. There was also a drink called tea, which he said was “gradually being introduced in Europe.” Consumption of this beverage is the “main reason there is no gout or stones in China.” It “keeps the oppression of sleep away from those who want to study.” It “is also used for relieving a hangover, and one soon can safely drink again.”

  As with many of his books, this one got a lot wrong and had a significant influence on its readers. One of the first widely available Western books on the subject, it was so well received that a second Latin edition was published within a year. Jansson and Weyerstraet prepared French and Dutch translations too, and further editions and excerpts were printed in Rome, Antwerp, and London, where the book at least contributed to the English fascination with Chinese language, architecture, and consumption of tea. (A London coffeehouse in Exchange Alley named Garraway’s was one of the few to serve tea at the time the book appeared. The British East India Company began to import tea in 1668, a year after China Illustrated was published.) Historian Charles D. Van Tuyl, who published an English translation of the book in 1987, says that it “was probably the single most important written source for shaping the Western understanding of China and its neighbors.”

  Kircher’s publishers in Amsterdam had already produced or were planning new editions of Universal Music-making, Underground World, and The Great Art of Light and Shadow. Translations and editions of other works had been printed in Leipzig, Würzburg, and Cologne. Copies of his books were in the possession of the Margrave of Brandenburg, the Duke of Saxony, the Duke of Waldstein, and the Duke of Schleswig. They were sold by book merchants in Vienna, London, Naples, Venice, Paris, and Madrid. And they were shipped, carted, and generally lugged to Jesuit colleges and missions all over the world. One French missionary took twenty-four copies of Universal Music-making and twelve copies of the four-volume Egyptian Oedipus with him from Lisbon to Peking.

  Kircher “had a global reputation,” says a twenty-first-century scholar, “that was virtually unsurpassed by any early modern author.” And with that fame sometimes came obsessive admirers. When a certain Criollo priest in New Spain named Alejandro Favián first came into contact with Universal Music-making, for instance, he was transformed by the experience. “Truly without exaggeration,” he wrote, “I say nothing better has ever happened to me in my life.” He idled away the hours not only reading Kircher’s books and writing him letters but staring at his portrait, which he’d decorated with feathers and gold. Favián even built a museum in which he hoped to display musical machines and optical devices. In imitation of his master he wrote a massive book of his own that he asked Kircher to help him publish. Titled Universal Ecstatic Tautology, it sounded more like a send-up of Kircher’s work than homage. But the five-volume, three-thousand-page tome was evidently an earnest attempt to encompass all things.

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  IT WOULD HAVE COME as no surprise to Favián or other infatuated readers that back in Rome the person they assumed was the greatest scholar of his time might collaborate again with the greatest artist of his time on another one of Rome’s popular landmarks.

  In September 1665, the Dominicans of Santa Maria sopra Minerva (St. Mary Above Minerva)—in whose convent Galileo was tried—were digging the foundations of a wall in their garden, when they found the remains of an obelisk. The site, in the shadow of the Pantheon and a few hundred feet from the Collegio Romano, was known to have been an ancient temple of Isis (Minerva to the Romans). Kircher wrote that his friend the pope sent for him right away: “Upon learning of the matter, without hesitation, His Own Blessedness summoned me to himself and entrusted to me the charge of examining the situation.” It was the pope’s will “that the ruined obelisk be revealed to the public light as quickly as possible in order to hasten the interpretation of the mysteries which are contained in it.”

  Kircher was unable to stay in Rome, because of the “approaching solemnity” of an “apostolic mission” at the shrine of Mentorella. So he delegated the task of copying down the markings on the obelisk to a student named Gioseffo Petrucci—“my assistant in the studies of Egyptian antiquities”—ordering Petrucci to send the scheme to him as soon as possible. But the young man, described elsewhere as “secular, originally from Lombardy,” could copy only three of the monument’s four sides: “The fourth side was lost on account of the difficulty of rolling the obelisk.” (At about eighteen feet, this obelisk was one of the smallest found in Rome, but eighteen feet of solid granite weighs a figurativ
e if not a literal ton.)

  But Kircher wasn’t put off by this limitation: “I (let there be praise and honor and glory to God), after completing a most precise scrutiny of the obelisk, grasped the entire series of mysteries hidden beneath it in such a way that not even that fourth side, which had been omitted from the delineation because it was hidden, escaped my comprehension.” It would be risky to share his delineation of all four sides, but he was sure of himself. “Rather bold perhaps in my confidence, although in no way insecure since all ambiguity had been put aside, I sent to Petrucci in Rome the yet uncovered fourth side’s scheme.”

  As Kircher told it, Petrucci was “thunderstruck.” He called together the Dominican fathers as well as some of “the more experienced literati” of Rome. “They in turn marveled at my boldness,” Kircher claimed, “and perhaps my lack of temerity, but several decreed that the truth of the matter must be determined by the original on the obelisk itself.”

  After the obelisk had finally been rolled, they compared Kircher’s scheme with the newly revealed side. “And when they had discovered that soundly and without error all of my markings were composed as on the original,” he recalled, “they were utterly stupefied, those same men who were formerly mocking my interpretations as merely pure conjecture.”

  This left “certain individuals saying that this knowledge had been inspired by the power of God, while several, not without calumny, even asserted that the knowledge had been acquired by some illicit pact with a demon. Some, finally, judged that this type of knowledge, attained by many years of study, was able to be acquired by the strength of a singular intellect.”

  The pope was of the last opinion, and even asked Kircher for private instruction in hieroglyphics. He wanted to understand the sacred meaning of the newly discovered monument that, in a sort of papal tradition, would be re-erected and “inscribed with the glorious title of his own name.” As Kircher interpreted the obelisk, the sacred meaning had to do with the way the

  supreme spirit and archetype infuses its virtue and gifts in the soul of the sidereal world, that is the solar spirit subject to it, from whence comes the vital motion in the material or elemental world, and abundance of all things and variety of species arises.

  Again it seemed that the Egyptians believed in the same kind of panspermatic solar abundance that Kircher espoused. It “flows ceaselessly,” according to his translation, because it is “drawn by some marvelous sympathy” that sounds an awful lot like magnetic attraction.

  Together with Bernini, who had recently returned from the court of Louis XIV in France, Kircher and the pope made plans for the obelisk to go in the square in front of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, near where it had been found. Bernini’s idea to put the monument on the back of a marble elephant alluded to a long tradition in which elephants were associated with intelligence as well as physical strength. But by the time the obelisk was dedicated in July of 1667, ever feeble Chigi had died, and it became a memorial to him. The Latin inscription on the base was written by Kircher:

  Everyone who sees the images carved on the obelisk by the wise Egyptians and carried by the elephant, the strongest of beasts, should understand: a robust mind is required to sustain solid wisdom.

  The pope never had a robust body, but his mind had sustained enough wisdom to inspire one of Rome’s favorite sculptures. Romans endearingly called the elephant il porcino (“the little pig”) until a few hundred years ago, when that morphed into il pulcino (“the little chick”). Kircher said it was a privilege to “bear the honor of observing him by erecting the Alexandrian obelisk.” But it was Kircher, after all, who revealed the divine wisdom, such as it was, to Chigi; it was Kircher who had worked so hard to penetrate the hidden mysteries of the hieroglyphics in the first place. And so, in helping erect this monument to Chigi’s robust mind, he was also erecting one to his own.

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  KIRCHER HAD ONCE even dared to dream, literally, that he might be made pope. According to a report published by Schott, he became “stricken with grave and perilous disease,” and after prescribing “soporific medicines” to himself, fell into a deep sleep. “He dreamt that he had been elected Supreme Pontiff and that he had garnered the legations and congratulations of the Christian Princes and the applauses of all nations, a thing which suffused him with boundless joy.” The dream somehow renewed him.

  Now, in Rome, many people were secretly relieved by the death of the “morbidly austere” Chigi, and they celebrated the announcement of the man who had been elected pope in reality, rather than in his dreams. The new pope, Giulio Rospigliosi, took the name Clement IX. He wrote comic opera librettos and enjoyed evenings out. To the job of secretary of state, he appointed the cardinal who was said to be Queen Christina’s lover. Christina, who had been on tours of Paris and Hamburg, returned to Rome and accepted a stipend. She helped Clement establish the first public opera house in the city, and helped persuade him to prohibit the racing of Jews during Carnival. (The prostitute races continued.)

  In addition to putting on plays of the sporchissime (very dirty) sort, and hosting the best harpsichordists and castrati at her palazzo, Christina took up archaeology, about which Kircher claimed some expertise, and alchemy, which Kircher had disparaged. She also held regular meetings of a literary and intellectual salon, which as a first order of business had banished overdone language and embellishment, the kind that Kircher had embraced.

  Kircher knew that some people thought his hieroglyphic interpretations were “pure conjecture.” The story of how he delineated the fourth side of the obelisk may have enhanced his reputation among those who already idolized him, but it didn’t “stupefy” quite as many of his detractors as he may have hoped. Those who went to see the obelisk must have noticed that the markings on each side were actually quite similar; it might not be too difficult to guess the fourth side, especially after almost thirty years of hieroglyphic study. To those who were dubious, Kircher was self-aggrandizing, and his self-proclaimed mastery of the hieroglyphics set him up for criticism and ridicule.

  Stories about Kircher began to travel within the social circles of Rome and the salons of other cities. Christina wrote in her memoirs, for example, about an incident involving a philologist named Andreas Müller. Müller concocted an utterly unintelligible manuscript, then sent it to Kircher with a note saying it had come from Egypt, and asking for a translation. Kircher apparently produced one right away.

  Once the word got out about these sorts of practical jokes, they were passed along with such frequency, and set down in so many different forms, that it became impossible to say for sure which tricks had actually been played. Was it “some mischievous youths of Rome” or a single “wicked wag” who had an old stone engraved with nonsense and then buried it one night at a site where workers were digging? When Kircher was called to interpret this stone, did he say that he needed time to try to discover the meaning, or did he begin, as one account had it, “to leap and dance for joy—and to give a beautiful interpretation of the circles, the crosses, and all the other meaningless signs”?

  One anecdote comes by way of the American author, critic, and newspaperman H. L. Mencken. In 1937, Mencken published The Charlatanry of the Learned, an English translation of a book originally printed in the eighteenth century by an ancestor named Johann Burkhard Mencken. As the story goes, Kircher was given a piece of silk paper containing some intriguing, odd-looking characters. After he spent a number of days trying to decipher it, he was finally taken to a mirror and shown that it was merely Latin written in reverse: Noli vana sectari et tempus perdere nugis nihil proficientibus, the message read. “Do not seek vain things, or waste time on unprofitable trifles.”

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  Everything

  Recall that for the Jesuits, the path toward Christ was predicated on an effort to achieve humility. It’s unclear how well or how often Kircher took a good look at his apparent lack in that regar
d. But given that hypocrisy is almost requisitely present in human beings, and common among religious, political, and philosophical practices, he surely wasn’t the only vain or self-interested member of the Society of Jesus.

  As the satirizing sermon by a monk from another order in Rome went, the Jesuits “are the best Men that Live on the Earth. They are as Modest as Angels. They never open their eyes to cast a Look upon the Ladies at Church. They are such great Lovers of Restraint, that you never see them in the Streets. They are so in Love with Poverty, that they Despise and trample upon all the Riches in the World. They never come near Dying Persons or Widows, to importune them to be Remember’d in their last Wills. . . . They never go among Courts, or mind State Affairs.”

  If the question among Jesuit authorities was whether Kircher was sometimes too concerned with advancing his own name, the answer may have been that even so, he had also advanced the interests of both the Jesuits and the Church.

  It’s said that as he got older, Kircher spent long periods of time in contemplation at the shrine of Mentorella. “Those letters you have sent to me,” he wrote a friend in his later years, “I have read with equal affection of the spirit, not in Rome, but established in the vast solitude of the Eustachian or Vulturellian mountain, to which I am accustomed to take myself during the autumn holidays, in order that, free from every worldly noise and with cares of studies somewhat set aside, I might be able to conduct the business of health with God, a business, if anything, of exceedingly great importance in the world.”

  Kircher certainly threw himself into the restoration of the shrine there with the same energy he put into his more prominent projects. To help pay for it, he “procured aid” from Leopold, the Holy Roman Emperor, the Duke of Bavaria, the archbishop of Prague, and “the most excellent” king of Naples.