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

by Glassie, John

  “I am approaching the point”: Descartes to Constantijn Huygens, January 5, 1643, in Theo Verbeek and H. J. M Bos, eds., The Correspondence of René Descartes 1643 (Utrecht: Zeno Institute for Philosophy, 2003), pp. 15–16.

  “the Magnet by Kircherus”: Huygens to Descartes, January 7, 1643, ibid., pp. 17–18.

  Descartes’s own explanation for magnetic attraction and polarity: Park Benjamin, History of Electricity (The Intellectual Rise of Electricity) from Antiquity to the Days of Benjamin Franklin (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1898), pp. 357–361.

  “flipping through them”: Descartes to Huygens, January 14, 1643, in Correspondence of René Descartes 1643, pp. 19–20.

  Chapter 10. An Innumerable Multitude of Catoptric Cats

  Procession of the newly elected pope: Evelyn, Diary and Correspondence, vol. 1, pp. 130–131.

  “Father Kircher . . . showed us many singular courtesies”: Ibid., p. 108.

  “far surpassed the competition”: Gorman, “Between the Demonic and the Miraculous.”

  “You will exhibit the most delightful trick”: Translation ibid.

  magic lantern: See W. A. Wagenaar, “The True Inventor of the Magic Lantern: Kircher, Walgenstein or Huygens?” Janus: Archives Internationales pour l’Histoire de la Médecine et pour la Géographie Médicale 66 (1979), pp. 194–207.

  dissected the eyeballs of bulls: Reilly, Athanasius Kircher, S.J., p. 82.

  “We say ‘Magna’ on account”: Athanasius Kircher, Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae . . . ††2 verso. See Bach, “Athanasius Kircher and His Method,” p. 231.

  “For just as the wise men of the Hebrews”: Kircher, Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae, in Bach, “Athanasius Kircher and His Method,” p. 267, n. 112.

  “He has established the Sun”: Kircher, Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae, pp. 5–6, in Bach, “Athanasius Kircher and His Method,” p. 68, p. 87, n. 28.

  Kircher’s theories about fireflies, chameleons, jellyfish: Reilly, Athanasius Kircher, S.J., pp. 77–80.

  “thickness of the atmosphere”: Ibid., p. 84.

  “rules which must be followed”: Ibid., p. 83.

  why the sky is blue: Kircher, Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae, p. 70, in Bach, “Athanasius Kircher and His Method,” p. 91, n. 41.

  “mites that suggested hairy bears”: In Torrey, “Athanasius Kircher and the Progress of Medicine,” p. 253.

  “so tiny that they are beyond”: Athanasius Kircher, Scrutinium Physico-Medicum Contagiosae Luis, Quae Pestis Dicitur . . . (Rome: Mascardi, 1658), p. 45, in Rowland, Ecstatic Journey, p. 105.

  image-projection . . . a Jesuit in the court wrote him: Johann Gans to Kircher, February 3, 1645, Archivio della Pontificia Università Gregoriana (APUG), ms. 561, fol. 123r; Johann Gans to Kircher, Vienna, June 24, 1645, APUG 561, fol. 135r; “The Correspondence of Athanasius Kircher: The World of a Seventeenth Century Jesuit” (hereafter Athanasius Kircher Correspondence Project), http://archimede.imss.fi.it/kircher.

  “an eminent man of optics”: John Bargrave, Pope Alexander the Seventh and the College of Cardinals (1662), ed. James Craigie Robertson ([London]: Camden Society, 1867), p. 134.

  “Egyptian wanderer”: In Rowland, Ecstatic Journey, pp. 19–20.

  “desire of joining to our work on Optics”: Athanasius Kircher, Praefatio ad Lectorem, Phonurgia Nova, sive Conjugium Mechanico-Physicum Artis & Naturae Paranympha Phonosophia Concinnatum . . . (Kempton, England: Rudolph Dreherr, 1673), p. [C] verso.

  “tone architecture”: Ibid., p. 111.

  “Should need arise”: Ibid., p. 112.

  infamous cat piano . . . “captured living cats”: Kaspar Schott, Magia Universalis Naturae et Artis, sive Recondita Naturalium et Artificialium Rerum Scientia . . . (Würzburg, 1657–1659), pp. 372–373; cited in Hankins and Silverman, Instruments and the Imagination, p. 246, n. 2.

  “notable abuses and faults”: Luigi Zenobi and Athanasius Kircher, The Perfect Musician, trans. Bonnie J. Blackburn and Leofranc Holford-Strevens (Kraków: Musica Iagellonica, 1995), p. 67.

  “such wretched compositions”: Ibid., p. 73.

  “the same twittering”: Ibid., p. 75.

  “The mechanical production of music”: In Jim Bumgardner, “Kircher’s Mechanical Composer: A Software Implementation,” Proceedings of the 2009 Bridges Banff Conference (Banff, Canada, 2009).

  “Father Kircher devoured my book”: Mersenne to Boulliaud, January 16, 1645, Correspondance du P. Marin Mersenne, vol. 13 (ed. Cornelis de Waard, 1977), p. 320.

  “a more or less direct influence”: Roman Vlad, “Kircher: A Knowledgeable Musicologist,” in Eugenio Lo Sardo, Iconismi e Mirabilia da Athanasius Kircher (Rome: Edizioni dell’Elefante, 1999), p. 66.

  Chapter 11. Four Rivers

  “grounds for praise of God” . . . “elude the empty machinations,” Vita, pp. 94–95.

  Kircher’s account of the re-erection of the obelisk in Piazza Navona: Vita, pp. 96–101.

  “I would even venture to say”: T. A. Marder, “Borromini e Bernini a Piazza Navona,” in Christoph Luitpold Frommel and Elisabeth Sladek, eds., Francesco Borromini: Atti del Convegno Internazionale (Rome, 2000), p. 144.

  “Tatu of the Indies”: Baldinucci, Life of Bernini, p. 37.

  “One marvels not a little”: Ibid., p. 38.

  “The whole Earth is not solid”: Kircher, The Vulcano’s, p. 3.

  The fountain as a reflection of Kircher’s geology: Rowland, Ecstatic Journey, pp. 15, 90.

  “the lodestone of heaven”: Kircher, Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae, p. 2, in Bach, “Athanasius Kircher and His Method,” p. 318, n. 84.

  Bernini “was forever inventing”: Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), p. 299.

  “it is difficult to trace”: Ibid., p. 302.

  Work on the fountain; grain shortage: Giacinto Gigli, Diario Romano, 1608–1670 (Rome: Tumminelli, 1957), p. 322.

  “a terrible thing happened”: Ibid., pp. 334–335.

  “he sent to me most eloquent letters”: Vita, p. 101.

  Kircher cited a tremor in his right hand: See Stolzenberg, “Egyptian Oedipus,” p. 144, n. 10.

  “the devastation of my entire fatherland”: Vita, p. 62.

  “could shoot a hare”: In Georgina Masson, Queen Christina (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969), p. 115.

  Descartes in Stockholm: Veronica Buckley, Christina, Queen of Sweden: The Restless Life of a European Eccentric (New York: Fourth Estate, 2004), pp. 107–115; A. C. Grayling, Descartes: The Life and Times of a Genius (New York: Walker, 2006), pp. 226–234; Masson, Queen Christina, pp. 126–132.

  Queen Christina’s Jesuit visitors: See von Ranke, History of the Popes, vol. 2, pp. 262–364, and Paolo Casati, “Paolo Casati ad Alessandro VII, sopra la regina di Suecia,” in von Ranke, History of the Popes, vol. 3, Appendix No. 131, pp. 430–433.

  “I hope that we shall henceforth”: Queen Christina to Kircher, undated, APUG 556, fol. 173r, f. 174r, Athanasius Kircher Correspondence Project, http://archimede.imss.fi.it/kircher/.

  Chapter 12. Egyptian Oedipus

  “half-consumed by rot”: Kaspar Schott, “Benevoli Lectori,” Oedipus Aegyptiacus, Hoc Est Universalis Hieroglyphicae Veterum Doctrinae Temporum Iniuria Abolitae Instavratio . . . (Rome: Mascardi, 1652–1654 [1655]); the Latin is in Stolzenberg, “Egyptian Oedipus,” p. 147.

  “a vast quantity”: Ibid., p. 148.

  “new heavenly bodies”: Ibid., p. 157.

  one Dutch bookseller alone bought five hundred copies: Ibid., p. 145.

  “as an oracle”: In John Fletcher, “A Brief Survey of the Unpublished Correspondence of Athanasius Kircher, S.J. (1602–1680),” Manuscripta 13 (1969), p. 150.

  “one of the most learned monstrosities”: Frank E. Manuel, The Eighteenth Century Confronts the Gods (Cambrid
ge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959), p. 190, in Baldwin, “Athanasius Kircher and the Magnetic Philosophy,” p. 7, n. 1.

  Chronology of wisdom: Curran, “Renaissance Afterlife of Ancient Egypt,” p. 128.

  “I am fully persuaded”: In Stolzenberg, “Egyptian Oedipus,” p. 161.

  “scattered among the chronicles”: Vita, pp. 57–60.

  “mysteries of the Egyptians”: Latin in Stolzenberg, “Egyptian Oedipus,” p. 149, n. 22.

  “Kircher’s he”: James Alban Gibbs, Elogium VIII, in Kircher, Oedipus Aegyptiacus, p. ++++2.

  “He has been exceedingly educated”: Schott, “Benevoli Lectori”; Latin is in Stolzenberg, “Egyptian Oedipus,” p. 147.

  “Long sections of the Oedipus”: Stolzenberg, “Egyptian Oedipus,” p. 216.

  “explain doubtful things clearly”: Ibid., p. 227.

  cited “too respectfully”: Ibid., p. 221.

  Barachias Nephi: Ibid., especially pp. 51–59, 65–66, 195, 263.

  “full plagiarist mode”: Ibid., p. 195.

  “not so much as writing”: Don Cameron Allen, “The Predecessors of Champollion,” Proceedings of the American Philosophers Society 104 (1960), p. 529.

  “The beneficent Being”: Rev. Richard Burgess, “On the Egyptian Obelisks in Rome and Monoliths as Ornaments of Great Cities,” read at the Ordinary General Meeting of the Royal Institute of British Architects, May 31, 1858, Papers Read at the Royal Institute of British Architects (London: The Institute, 1858), p. 173.

  “flight of the imagination and learning run mad”: Ibid.

  “fundamental unity of human culture”: Curran, “Renaissance Afterlife of Ancient Egypt,” p. 102.

  Chapter 13. The Admiration of the Ignorant

  “curious little men”: In Aldagisa Lugli, “Inquiry as Collection: The Athanasius Kircher Museum in Rome,” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 12 (Autumn 1986), pp. 109–124.

  “It happened that I was compelled”: Kircher, Phonurgia Nova, p. 113.

  “tail and bones” of a mermaid: Athanasius Kircher, Arca Noë in Tres Libros Digesta . . . (Amsterdam: Jansson-Waesberg, 1675), p. 73, in Joscelyn Godwin, Athanasius Kircher’s Theatre of the World: The Life and Work of the Last Man to Search for Universal Knowledge (Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2009), p. 150.

  “armillary spheres” . . . “an organ, driven by an automatic drum”: Giorgio de Sepibus, Romanii Collegii Musaeum Celeberrimum Cuius Magnae Antiquariae Rei . . . (Amsterdam: Jansson-Waesberg, 1678), pp. 2–3, in Gorman, “Between the Demonic and the Miraculous.”

  vomiting machines: Ibid. For more on Kircher and Baroque-era regurgitation, see Anthony Grafton, “Magic and Technology in Early Modern Europe,” Dibner Library Lecture, October 15, 2002, Smithsonian Institution Libraries (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Libraries, 2005), pp. 9–18.

  “ghosts in the air”: Ibid.

  Delphic Oracle: Kircher, Phonurgia Nova, pp. 161–163.

  “investigation of the learned”: Findlen, “Scientific Spectacle in Baroque Rome,” p. 262.

  Kircher’s correspondence: See the Athanasius Kircher Correspondence Project, http://archimede.imss.fi.it/kircher/.

  “It can hardly be said how many inscriptions”: Schott, “Benevoli Lectori,” in Stolzenberg, “Egyptian Oedipus,” p. 149, n. 22.

  Astronomical reports sent to Kircher: See Fletcher, “Astronomy,” pp. 59–60.

  “finally exalted to the supreme tip”: Vita, p. 117.

  “not enjoy what one would call perfect health”: Angelo Correr, Relazione della Corte Romana (Leiden: Lorens, 1662), p. 69, in Rowland, Ecstatic Journey, p. 56.

  “had so taken upon him the profession”: John Bargrave, Pope Alexander the Seventh and the College of Cardinals (1662), ed. James Craigie Robertson ([London]: Camden Society, 1867), p. 7.

  “liked his company to be gay in reason”: Alexis-François Artaud de Montor, The Lives and Times of the Popes, Including the Complete Gallery of the Portraits of the Pontiffs Reproduced from “Effigies pontificum Romanorum Dominici Basae” (New York: Catholic Publication Society of New York, 1911 [1836–1843]), vol. 6, p. 105.

  “literary meetings”: “Vita di Alessandro VII,” in von Ranke, History of the Popes, vol. 3, Appendix No. 135, p. 438.

  “wished to have Bernini with him every day”: Baldinucci, Life of Bernini, p. 42.

  “abrupt and unanticipated departure”: Martha Baldwin, “Reverie in Time of Plague,” in Paula Findlen, ed., Athanasius Kircher: The Last Man Who Knew Everything (New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 68–69.

  “no established domicile”: In Gale E. Christianson, “Kepler’s Somnium: Science Fiction and the Renaissance Scientist,” Science Fiction Studies, No. 8, vol. 3, part 1 (March 1976), http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/8/christianson8art.htm.

  “You are mistaken, and greatly so”: In Ingrid D. Rowland, “Athanasius Kircher, Giordano Bruno, and the Panspermia of the Infinite Universe,” in Paula Findlen, ed., Athanasius Kircher: The Last Man Who Knew Everything (New York: Routledge, 2004), p. 194.

  “a vessel full of celestial dew” . . . “immense Ocean”: Athanasius Kircher, Itinerarium Exstaticum Quo Mundi Opificium . . . (Rome: Vitale Mascardi, 1656), pp. 122–123.

  Mars is “harsh with bulges”: Ibid., pp. 185–186.

  Saturn has “horrendous form”: Ibid., p. 231.

  “The whole mass of this solar globe”: In Rowland, “Athanasius Kircher, Giordano Bruno,” p. 195.

  “for the most part inane”: In Baldwin, “Athanasius Kircher and the Magnetic Philosophy,” p. 38.

  “the offspring of consummate scholarship”: In Fletcher, “Astronomy,” p. 58.

  “easily the Phoenix amongst the learned men”: Ibid., p. 52.

  “To be sure, Kircher on occasion reproves”: In Rowland, Ecstatic Journey, p. 100.

  “the way a peasant uses his fields”: In Buckley, Christina, Queen of Sweden, p. 72.

  “a political invention”: Ibid., p. 162.

  Queen Christina’s entry into Denmark: Ibid., p. 163.

  “Father Athanasius Kircherus the great Mathematician”: Galeazzo Gualdo Priorato, The History of the Sacred and Royal Majesty of Christina Alessandra, Queen of Swedland, trans. John Burbury (London: T.W., 1658), pp. 428–431.

  “She has seen everything”: In von Ranke, History of the Popes, vol. 2, p. 356.

  “everything from rotten fruit to dead cats”: Torgil Magnuson, Rome in the Age of Bernini: From the Election of Sixtus V to the Death of Urban VIII (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1982), p. 190, in Buckley, Christina, Queen of Sweden, p. 189.

  Chapter 14. Little Worms

  people “of the highest quality”: R. Goodwin and Richard Burdekin, An Historical Account of the Plague: And Other Pestilential Distempers Which Have Appear’d in Europe (York, England: R. Burdekin, 1832 [1743]), p. 34.

  the pestilence had “slithered” inside: Athanasius Kircher, Prooemium ad Lectorem, Scrutinium Physico-Medicum Contagiosae Luis, Quae Pestis Dicitur . . . (Rome: Vitale Mascardi, 1658), p. ++ .

  “with evil signs”: Guenter B. Risse, Mending Bodies, Saving Souls: A History of Hospitals (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 192.

  every year except two: According to the medical historian Jean-Noel Biraben; see the review of William Eamon, Healers and Modern Healing, in Renaissance Quarterly, June 22, 1999.

  Kircher’s descriptions of the symptoms of the plague: in Ralph H. Major, Classic Descriptions of Disease: With Biographical Sketches of the Authors (Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1932), pp. 82–83.

  “Here you are overwhelmed”: In Risse, Mending Bodies, Saving Souls, p. 208. See pp. 190–213 for an overview of the plague and the San Bartolomeo pesthouse.

  “plague most atrocious” . . . “In this state of affair
s”: Kircher, Prooemium ad Lectorem, Scrutinium Physico-Medicum Contagiosae Luis, pp. +++++2.

  Kircher’s account of contagion: Baldwin, “Athanasius Kircher and the Magnetic Philosophy,” pp. 387–390.

  It is “generally known that worms grow”: In Major, Classic Descriptions of Disease, p. 7.

  “Take a piece of meat” . . . “if you cut a snake into little pieces”: In Torrey, “Athanasius Kircher and the Progress of Medicine,” pp. 257–258.

  “The putrid blood of those affected” . . . “these worms, propagators of the plague”: In Charles-Edward Amory Winslow, The Conquest of Epidemic Disease: A Chapter in the History of Ideas (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980 [1943]), pp. 149–152.

  “a farrago of nonsensical speculation”: C. C. Dobell, Antony van Leeuwenhoek and His ‘Little Animals’ (London, 1932), p. 365, in Torrey, “Athanasius Kircher and the Progress of Medicine,” p. 248.

  “undoubtedly the first”: Fielding H. Garrison, An Introduction to the History of Medicine (Philadelphia, 1929), p. 252, in Torrey, “Athanasius Kircher and the Progress of Medicine,” p. 246.

  “there are many seeds of things”: Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, trans. William H. D. Rouse and rev. Martin F. Smith (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975), 6. 1093–1102, pp. 575–577.

  “imperceptible particles”: Winslow, Conquest of Epidemic Disease, p. 132; see pp. 117–143.

  “the reputation of things Kircherian”: For response to Examination of the Plague, see John Fletcher, “Medical Men in the Correspondence of Athanasius Kircher,” Janus: Archives Internationales pour l’Histoire de la Médecine et pour la Géographie Médicale 56 (1969), pp. 263–265.

  Toad amulet: Baldwin, “Athanasius Kircher and the Magnetic Philosophy,” pp. 389–390.

  Chapter 15. Philosophical Transactions

  “a book-making, knowledge-regurgitating machine”: Findlen, “The Last Man Who Knew Everything . . . Or Did He?,” p. 2.

  Crosses had mysteriously begun to appear: Stephen Jay Gould, “Father Athanasius Kircher on the Isthmus of a Middle State,” in Paula Findlen, ed., Athanasius Kircher: The Last Man Who Knew Everything (New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 233–236; see also Brian L. Merrill, Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680), Jesuit Scholar: An Exhibition of His Works in the Harold B. Lee Library Collections at Brigham Young University (Provo, Utah: Friends of The Brigham Young University Library, 1989), p. 36.