KIRCHER, ATHANASIUS. - Jesuit, scholar and polygraph, b. at Geisa (Fulda) on 2 May 1601, d. at Rome on 27 Nov. 1680. He first taught (1629) ethics and mathematics at the University of Würzburg, adding also lectures on Hebrew and Syriac: but in 1631 he was forced by the Swedish victories in Germany to take refuge in Avignon, where he engaged in an intense study of hieroglyphs and their decipherment. Called to the Roman College in 1635, he taught there for some time physics, mathematics and Oriental languages, but afterwards was left free for his studies and his research, surrounded by the esteem and the help of learned men and scholars.
From this came a copious harvest of pamphlets and works (44 printed vols.) on the most disparate subjects, so much so that he was called by his contemporaries "doctor centum artium"; but if in them he displays a very broad erudition and an extraordinary versatility of genius, he does not however always display soundness of criticism, admitting puerile interpretations and accepting reports with a credulity somewhat beyond measure.
He dealt with philology, especially with Egyptology, in Prodromus coptus (Rome 1636), Lingua Aegyptiaca restituta (ibid. 1643), Oedypus Aegyptiacus (3 vols., ibid. 1652-54)
He dealt with philology, especially with Egyptology, in Prodromus coptus (Rome 1636), Lingua Aegyptiaca restituta (ibid. 1643), Oedypus Aegyptiacus (3 vols., ibid. 1652-54)
thinking he had discovered the key to the reading of the hieroglyphs, Obeliscus Pamphilus (ibid. 1650), where he explains the hieroglyphs of the obelisk of Piazza Navona, restored by Bernini under K.'s direction; on physics with Ars magnesia (Würzburg 1631), Specula Melitensis (Naples 1638), Ars magna lucis et umbrae (Rome 1645); on astronomy with Itinerarium extaticum seu opificium coeleste (ibid. 1656); on geology with Iter extaticum secundum (ibid. 1657) and Mundus subterraneus in XII libros digestus (ibid. 1665), where he speaks of earthquakes, volcanoes, underground currents of water; on mathematics with Organum mathematicum (Würzburg 1668); on medicine with Scrutinium physico-medicum contagiosae luis, quae pestis dicitur (ibid. 1658), in which he is one of the first to speak of the bacilli of the plague; on music with Musurgia universalis, sive ars consoni et dissoni (ibid. 1650), Phonurgia nova (Kempten 1673); on chorography with Latium (Amsterdam 1771); on liturgy with Rituale ecclesiae Aegyptiacae (ibid. 1647). Still to be consulted with profit is China monumentis qua sacris, qua profanis... illustrata (Rome 1667), where from the reports of missionaries and from his readings he gathers information on the history, art, sciences, religion and worship of the Chinese; it does not lack an exaggerated good faith in the interpretation of the facts. His many relations with the scholars of his time gave rise to an extensive correspondence of great usefulness for science, partly published and scattered through several publications, partly still unpublished (cf. Sommervogel, IV, coll. 1070-75; in the Archives of the Gregorian University are preserved 114 vols. of letters sent to K. by eminent scientists).
To K. is also owed a precious collection, ever more enlarged, of mathematical and physical instruments, of machines, of every sort of object of interest for classical, Christian, Oriental and South American antiquity and for ethnography, which gave rise to the Museum of the Roman College, later called, after the name of the founder of the collection, the Kircherian Museum.
In his last years he erected on the Sabine hills the Marian sanctuary of Mentorella, a destination of numerous pilgrimages, where, later, his heart was placed.