Monumenta Kircheri

The project

Umberto Eco famously defined the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680) as ‘the most contemporary among our ancestors, and the most outdated among our contemporaries’. We propose to focus on Kircher's Correspondence and on his works. Athanasius Kircher is as a case study to explore the complexities and paradoxes of a ‘long’ modernity, starting from the seventeenth century up to our own world. In fact, the fundamental aim of this project is to articulate more clearly what is often hidden in every historical research: what matters to us is not in the past, but in the present. From a methodological point of view, we want this project to be not simply inter-disciplinary, but indeed trans-disciplinary. We start from Kircher’s crucial role in the early modern Republic of Letters and we insert Kircher’s case within a larger context involving the question of the nature of knowledge as both a kind of savoir faire and a kind of savoir vivre. From this perspective, we propose to reconsider Kircher’s vast bibliographical production and the methods of its dissemination, highlighting how Kircher grappled with, and contributed to develop, the concept of novitas. Our project is also concerned with the material aspect of culture, and more specifically with the early modern changes in the modes and methods of communicating and disseminating knowledge. The way in which Kircher managed, reproduced, and created knowledge is a lens through which we can understand several fundamental aspects of both the early modern and the modern world, which have been the object of a recent surge of scholarly interest, such as the exponential growth of information and consequently the development of new and more effective techniques to digest, store, and select this new amount of knowledge.

The Archives preserve 14 volumes of letters sent by and to Athanasius Kircher and five manuscripts, mostly unpublished. Years ago, Stanford University digitized all the letters and made them accessible via LunaImaging software, enriching them with detailed metadata. To complete this work, here we have started to transcribe the letters. In addition we will proceed to transcribe a selection of Kircher's published works.

This project is supported by Fondazione Sorgente Group.

Athanasius Kircher Correspondence

Kircher's Correspondence constitutes the biggest section of the project.

Athanasius Kircher Works

In this section we will provide full descriptions and partial transcriptions from Kircher's works.

Bibliographia Kircheriana

This section of the Athanasius Kircher Project aims to set up a comprehensive database of publications about Kircher. This bibliography is based on two main sources:

1. László Polgár, Bibliographie sur l'histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus, 1901-1980, Roma, Institutum Historicum S.I., 1981-1990;
2. the annual bibliography published in Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, that since 1981 continues the Polgár's work.
   

More bibliographic entries are constantly added and updated. If you should notice any lack or mistake, please send an email to archivio@unigre.it or, if you already have a GATE account, write a message to ArchivesPUG.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Fiammetta Iovine for her valuable and unique contribution to this project.