JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

Continuing this blog’s occasional thread on the great, idiosyncratic, and troublesome Fr. Athanasius Kircher, I report on this spectacular image. It is supposed to be an engraving of a found-image in a piece of agate or some such, showing the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus, surrounded by s curiously radiating display of “light”.  According to one reference the image first appears with Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605) who must have included it with one of the natural histories before it founds its way into Kircher’s Mundus¹.  

The partial description above the print references the Church Grottes Vald (in Lucerne), where this relic was to be found.  

And the full sheet, in two parts:

And the bottom half that wouldn’t fit on the scanner:

In reality these are simply on the same sheet, uninterrupted.

The second image is identified so: “Sceleton humani corporis in saxum conversum…”², and refers to what was supposed to be fossilized human remains covered by some sort of fossil -something.  The remains weren’t fossilized, of course, but in 1657, that was the difficult leap that was make. 

Notes:

1.  The full title by Kircher (1602-1680): Mundus subterraneus, in XII libros digestus : qvo divinum subterrestris mundi opificium, mira ergasteriorum naturae in eo distributio, verbo [pantamorphon] Protei regnum, universae denique naturae majestas & divitiae summa rerum varietate exponuntur, abditorum effectuum causae acri indagine inquistae demonstrantur, cognitae per artis & naturae conjugium ad humanae vitae necessarium usum vario experimentorum apparata, necnon novo modo & ratione applicantur. Ad Alexandrum VII. pont. opt. max, 1665. 

2. This image can be seen in full text in a somewhat later edition of the Mundus of 1678 at Heidelburg http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/kircher1678bd2/0062 and another series of images at University of Oklahoma, http://hos.ou.edu/galleries//17thCentury/Kircher/1665-det-composites/.