The 1711 catalogue of the library of Sir Thomas
Browne indicates that the German Jesuit polymath
Athanasius Kircher was one of the physician-philosopher's favourite authors. The
subject-matter of Kircher’s many books -
optics, alchemy, comparative religion, antiquities, the unusual and even
down-right bizarre to modern sensibilities, reflect several shared interests and a close perspective in outlook between two of the seventeenth century's greatest
polymaths.
Athanasius Kircher’s books are well-represented in Thomas Browne's
library, including his optical work Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae (1646) whose
frontispiece is above. Kircher’s The
Great Art of Light and Shadow was in all
probability, one of the earliest of books purchased by Browne since commencing his residency in Norwich, after the physician-philosopher's marriage in 1642.
Published the same year as Browne’s encyclopedic endeavour to promote scientific understanding, Pseudodoxia Epidemica first saw light during the endgame of the English civil war in 1646. Further revised editions of Browne's major contribution to the scientific revolution appeared until the last edition in 1672.
The frontispiece of Kircher's The Great Art of Light and Shadow depicts a personification of the sun, with the symbols of the zodiac covering his body, below him sits a double-headed eagle. On the right, a woman as a personification of the moon and covered in stars, below her sits two peacocks. Rays of light hit various lenses which reflects Kircher's optical discoveries. The frontispiece (above) also depicts Kircher's sources of knowledge in descending order of clarity: sacred authority, reason, sense (aided by instruments) and profane authority. Browne in his Pseudodoxia lists authority, experience and reason as his primary sources of knowledge.
Kircher discovered that by placing a lens between a screen and a mirror which had been written on, a sharp but inverted image would appear on the screen. Using a spherical water-filled flask as a condenser to concentrate the light. Images and texts painted on the mirror's surface could be projected by light from a candle after dark. These optical demonstrations eventually resulted in the birth of the magic lantern, an invention which is sometimes attributed to Kircher.
A near exact contemporary
of Thomas Browne (1605-82) Athanasius
Kircher (1601-1680) has been described as ‘the supreme representative of
Hermeticism within post-Reformation Europe’. Although now known to have
been often mistaken in many of his theories, especially in comparative
religion, Kircher, like Browne in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica disseminated
and popularized much new scientific knowledge, including recent discoveries
confirmable to amateur scientists in the field
of optics and magneticism. Browne
devoted several chapters on his own experiments in magneticism and static electricity in Book 2 of Pseudodoxia Epidemica .
Kircher studied philosophy, mathematics, Greek and Hebrew, as did
Browne. But above all else he shared with Browne a deep interest in comparative religion and the esoteric. Browne even respecting Kircher’s knowledge in the field of comparative religion enough to describe him as - 'that eminent example of industrious
Learning, Kircherus'.
Kircher believed that Egyptian paganism was the fount of virtually
all other beliefs and creeds whether Greek, Roman, Hebrew, Chaldean or even
Indian, Japanese, Aztec and Inca. His three jumbo-sized volumes of
perceived syncreticism in comparative religion Oedipus Egypticus (Rome 1652-56) of over 2000
pages are a land-mark in printing and esoterica. Given the fact that many books of western
esoterica are listed as once owned by Browne it’s not too surprising that
Kircher’s vast work Oedipus Egypticus was once in his library.
The Norwich-based physician-philosopher alluded to the Bembine Tablet of Isis which is reproduced by Athanasius Kircher in Oedipus
Egypticus in his own work of Hermetic
phantasmagoria The Garden of Cyrus
(1658).
In addition to being scholars of science and esoterica Kircher and Browne were also extremely interested in accounts of far-way
lands such as China.
This is reflected in fact that the latest
reports from traveller’s, mostly missionaries returning to Rome from China, were collected and compiled by Kircher in his
China Illustrata (Amsterdam 1667). Although the earliest mention of the Chinese root-vegetable ginseng occurs in the Oxford English dictionary dated 1654, Sir Thomas Browne remembered the first detailed description of the root-vegetable Ginseng from his reading of Kircher's China Illustrata in a letter dated April 2nd 1679 to Edward Browne -
Deare Sonne, -You did well to observe Ginseng. All exotick rarities, especially of the East , the East India trade having encreased, are brought in England, and the profitt made thereof. Of this plant Kircherus writeth in his China illustrata, pag. 178, cap. "De Exoticis China plantis".
