[History of Science - 17th century - Jesuit Scientists] [Earth Science] [Geography and Hydrography] [Geology and Mineralogy]
[Chemistry and Alchemy] [Occult] [Volcanology] [Astronomy] [Cartography] [Early Book Illustrations - Baroque]
Printed in Amsterdam by Johannes Janssonius van Waesberge and sons, 1678.
Two volumes bound in one massive folio. THIRD EDITION, considerably expended. SCARCE!
Text in Latin (with occasional words or passages in Greek, Hebrew, Arabic and German). Profusely illustrated with superb engraved plates and maps (most folding or double-page), as well as engravings and woodcuts in-text.
Third Edition of Kircher\'s MONUMENTAL AND RICHLY ILLUSTRATED STUDY OF THE WONDERS OF THE SUBTERRANEAN WORLD, and a magnificent example of Baroque book production and illustration. Kircher\'s encyclopedic work, fascinating in its scope and spectacular in its presentation, \"must always command a high place in the literature as the first effort to describe the earth from a physical standpoint.\" (K. A. von Zittel, History of Geology and Palæontology to the End of the Nineteenth Century, p. 25).
First published in 1665, the Mundus subterraneus is \"PERHAPS THE MOST POPULAR OF KIRCHER\'S WORKS IN HIS DAY, AND THE BEST KNOWN IN OURS.\" (Brian Merrill, ed., Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680), Jesuit Scholar, p.41)
As an evidence of the book\'s great popularity and influence, Merrill notes that it is cited in various works and letters of many of Kircher\'s illustrious contemporaries, such as Baruch Spinoza, John Locke, Christian Huygens, Nicolas Steno, Martin Lister, et al.
The Mundus subterraneus was \"the first encyclopedia to systematically explore the forces that shaped the world below the surface, including the nature and location of volcanoes, earthquakes, ocean currents, and the formation of fossils. Written from the reports of Jesuit missionaries throughout the world, it was a truly global natural history.\" (DSB)
This celebrated work, based on Kircher\'s experiences of the eruption of Vesuvius in 1637 and the 14 days of earthquakes that shook Calabria in 1638, attempts to show that the subterranean world is composed of two interlocking systems of fire and water, and even though some of its theories were wildly mistaken, it represents the first serious effort to describe the physical makeup of the earth.
\"Kircher pointed out a hydrologic circle of water by evaporation, geysers, creeks, cold-water springs, and oozing through the seabed back to the abyss. His description of the influence of weathering, which he ascribed to a kind of chemical process and to cold, was sound, as was that of the geological action of water and wind.\" (DSB).
Among the numerous fascinating engravings illustrating Kircher\'s magnificent folio is an important world map (Shirley, The Mapping of the World, 436), which was one of the earliest to show ocean currents with any degree of accuracy.
\"In this book we find the first map[s] of the ocean currents: there are two, clearly preceding Halley by some fifteen years, and on them we find the equatorial current of the Pacific and the Peruvian coastal flow. Kircher reveals his knowledge of the division of the equatorial current off Brazil and its penetration into the Gulf of Mexico. However, he wrongly attributes the Gulf Stream to another division of the equatorial current passing around the Antilles and, as might be expected, he is not short of theories about these wonderful tidal phenomena. [...] A further current, unknown to science, is also postulated: at the North Pole, the seas drain into a huge thirsty whirlpool and are led by devious routes through the earth to re-emerge, purified by the inner fire, at the South Pole, there to resume the endless ebb and flow. [...]
Kircher [also] describes the underground connections between the Black Sea and both the Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf; the Red Sea with the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea; the Gulf of Bothnia with the White Sea and the Atlantic, which, en route for northeast Europe, passes under Sicily. Finally, Kircher hinted generously at the probable connection of the mountain lakes of Mexico with the Mexican Gulf.\" (John E. Fletcher, A Study of the Life and Works of Athanasius Kircher, p.173-4)
\"The basis and impetus for the Mundus subterraneus was Kircher’s visit to Sicily and 1637-38, where he witnessed an eruption of Aetna and Stromboli. He prefaced the work with his own narrative of the trip, including his spectacular descent into Vesuvius upon his return to Italy. His observations of these volcanoes led him to conclude that the center of the earth is a massive internal fire for which the volcanoes are mere safety valves.\" (Merrill, Op. cit., p.41)
Kircher postulated a central source of heat at the centre of the globe, and produced a stunning cross-section of the Earth showing a central mass of flame feeding heat to the surface through a complex network of channels and fissures and subsidiary bodies of fire distributed through the interior. Volcanoes were created where the Earth’s internal fires escaped at the surface, and also served to draw in air to sustain those subterranean fires. The source of the combustion was the combining of salt, sulphur, bitumen and other inflammable and explosive materials within the Earth.
The idea of subterranean fire innate to the Earth developed during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as a means of accounting for the presence and distribution of hot springs. Its application to the problem of volcanoes was a natural development, significant for reflecting an awareness of volcanoes as a global phenomenon produced by a global process, rather than the purely localized product of wind action upon deposits of combustible materials. Kircher’s very influential work can be seen as playing an important part in the dissemination of this notion.
The entire Book X is devoted to mines and minerals. \"Kircher relates that through the medium of Jesuit priests, he put several questions to the miners at Neusohl in Hungary. Some of these referred to the conditions of temperature in the mines [...] The answer from Schemnitz was that in a well-ventilated mine the heat was scarcely perceptible, but that with poor ventilation the mines were always warm. Johann Schapelmann, an official of the mines in Herrngrund, reported as follows: \'In dry mines the temperature steadily increases in proportion to the depth below the surface; where water lies, the heat is less; it is greatest in the parts of the mines where marcasite occurs.\' This is the first observation of the steady increase of temperature with added depth.\" (Zittel, p. 25).
\"But the work is not solely geologic. Kircher continues with fantastic speculations about the interior of the earth, its hidden lakes, its rivers of fire, and its strange inhabitants. Major topics include gravity, the moon, the sun, eclipses, ocean currents, subterranean waters and fires, meteorology, rivers and lakes, hydraulics, minerals and fossils, subterranean giants, beasts and demons, poisons, metallurgy and mining, alchemy, the universal seed and the generation of insects, herbs, astrological medicine, distillation, and fireworks. [Kircher also] discloses his experience with palingenesis: he had allegedly resuscitated a plant from its ashes.
Much of the work deals with alchemy. Kircher ridicules Paracelsus\' belief in transmutation and discredits the work of alchemists in general [...] This diatribe brought him vicious criticism and abuse later in life from alchemists who no longer feared the authority of the Jesuit order.\" (ioffer.)
There are also extensive sections on distillation (illustrated with fine engravings of distillation equipment), and on glass-making.
In its geographical chapters Mundus Subterraneus famously identifies the location of the legendary lost island of Atlantis (illustrated with a small engraved map), as well as the source of the Nile: according to Kircher, it started in the “Mountains of the Moon,” then ran northward through “Guix,” “Sorgola,” and “Alata” and on into “Bagamidi” before reaching Ethiopia and Egypt.
In one of the chapters, Kircher offers a fascinating discussion of people who dwell in caves (describing their societies and their economy). He reports on the remains of giants (also mainly cave dwellers) found in the ground, and goes into detail on various kinds of animals inhabiting the subterranean world, including an extensive discussion of dragons.
Athanasius Kircher (1601 - 1680), a German Jesuit polymath scholar, was born in Geisa near Eisenbach. Kircher was educated in the Jesuit college of Fulda and took orders in 1618 at Paderborn. He travelled throughout Sicily, Malta, and the Lipari islands. In 1630 he was a Professor at Wurzburg but took flight in 1633 to Avignon on the approach of the Swedes. He became a teacher of mathematics at the Collegium Romanum in Rome. He died in Rome in 1680.
He published around 40 major works, most notably in the fields of Oriental studies, geology, and medicine. Kircher has been compared to Leonardo da Vinci for his enormous range of interests, and has been honored with the title \"Master of a Hundred Arts\".
Kircher was an accomplished linguist and claimed to have deciphered the hieroglyphic writing of the ancient Egyptian language. Although most of his conjectures and translations in this field were later found to be wrong, he did, however, correctly establish the link between the ancient Egyptian and the modern Coptic languages, and some commentators regard him as the founder of egyptology.
A resurgence of interest in Kircher has occurred within the scholarly community in recent decades. Today\'s historians of science \"see Kircher as an exemplary figure in understanding the transition from ancient to modern ways of thinking about the world. He was a man who immersed himself in the currents of scholarship at the height of the seventeenth century while publicly proclaiming the value of traditional learning and faith. Most importantly, he was a fascinating by-product of the Society of Jesus: a Catholic natural philosopher in the age of Galileo, Descartes, and a young Newton, a Jesuit priest whose goal was to incorporate aspects of the new natural and experimental philosophy and a fuller understanding of ancient (especially Neoplatonic and Hermetic) philosophies of knowledge into the traditional Aristotelian-Ptolemaic worldview upheld by the Catholic Church following its condemnation of heliocentrism in 1616 and the trial of Galileo in 1633. [...] Kircher was a man trying to invent a new cosmology - one that incorporated the findings of early-seventeenth-century astronomy and physics into a philosophy deeply indebted to antiquity but also to philosophers such as Nicolas Cusanus and Giordano Bruno.\" (DSB)
The results of Kircher’s speculations were often far from orthodox, causing the Jesuit censors to critique his Mundus subterraneus (as well as Kircher\'s other important works such as the Oedipus Aegyptiacus, and Itinerarium exstaticum) prior to their publication.
Bibliographic references:
Dorbon-Aine 23887; Duveen p.322; Sabin 37967; Dünnhaupt/Kircher 16b; Sommervogel IV, 1060, no.21; Brunet III, 667; Graesse IV, p. 21; Wellcome lll, 395.
Physical description:
2 volumes in one. Thick Folio (textblock measures 36½ cm x 24 cm.). In an imposing contemporary (late 17th-century) binding of blind-stamped vellum over thick wooden boards, with an \'IHS\' Jesuit emblem at center of both covers, two (perfectly functional) brass clasps. Spine with five large raised bands. Edges dyed red.
Pagination:[20], 366, [6]; [10], 507, [9] pp.+ plates and tables. (Leaves Gg2,3 in Vol. II transposed in binding.)
Illustrated with two engraved title-pages (one in each volume). 19 engraved plates and maps (including 13 double-page and/or folding), and 5 letterpress tables (of which 3 are double-page and 1 folding) hors texte. Engraved device on the printed title-page to Vol. I, numerous woodcut and engraved illustrations in text (some of which are full-page), woodcut decorative initials and large tailpieces. Numerous tables in text.
Lacking (as often) the frontispiece portrait of Kircher and the two moving components of the volvelles on pp. 165 & 167 in Vol.I (often found unassembled, as two small plates).
Otherwise COMPLETE. [Note that although a few copies also have a portrait of the dedicatee, Pope Alexander VII, Graesse does not call for the portrait of the Pope (who had died in 1667) in this 1678 edition, and it may be that the author\'s portrait is not required here either.]
Main text printed in double columns, mostly in Roman letter, with several instances of use of Greek, Hebrew and Arabic types; occasional German words printed in Gothic letter.
Preliminaries to both volumes include author\'s dedicatory epistles addressed to Pope Alexander VII (in vol. I), and to Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor (in vol. II), author\'s prefaces and tables of contents; each volume ends with an index.
Provenance:
On the first letterpress title-page is a late 17th-century ownership inscription of Frater Vitus Burckhardt of the Order of Minims.
Unterrealschule bei St Anna, Vienna, (Austria), with its (19th- or early 20th-century) ink stamp on printed title-page and the second engraved title.Lehrerinnen-bildungsanstalt Sammlung, Vienna, (Austria), with its (ca.1940) ink stamp on the printed title-page, incorporating the Reichsadler, the official emblem of the Third Reich (German eagle atop of a swastika within a wreath of oak leaves).
Condition:
Very Good antiquarian condition. Binding slightly rubbed, with wear to fore-corners, top of spine worn and slightly chipped, top headband broken. Bottom compartment of spine covered with paper at an early date, with a manuscript shelf-mark. Binding quite solid and fresh, with both clasps and catches intact and functional, both joints intact. A few small wormholes to endpapers, slightly affecting the first engraved title, and the bottom margin of the two following preliminary leaves and bottom margin of the final two index leaves (without any loss of text). Faded old ink-stamps to printed title and the 2nd engraved title (see Provenance above. Occasional light soiling. Several leaves with light to moderate browning, but textblock generally very clean and bright, mostly free from foxing and browning (uncommonly for 17th-century editions). A few of the folding plates with closed tears, mainly near edges, or at folds, due to careless opening and/or misfolding (including a longer tear to the mining equipment plate in Vol.II), but without any actual loss to the engraved images.In all, a solid and attractively bound example of this fascinating and rare work.
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