{"id":1743,"date":"2015-11-25T19:25:07","date_gmt":"2015-11-25T17:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.horus.cz\/WProclamatio\/?p=1743"},"modified":"2015-11-25T19:59:56","modified_gmt":"2015-11-25T17:59:56","slug":"athanasius-podsveti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.horus.cz\/WProclamatio\/athanasius-podsveti\/","title":{"rendered":"Athanasius: Podsv\u011bt\u00ed"},"content":{"rendered":"

With his enormous range of scholarly pursuits the 17th century polymath Athanasius Kircher has been hailed as the last Renaissance man and \u201cthe master of hundred arts\u201d. John Glassie looks at one of Kircher\u2019s great masterworks Mundus Subterraneus<\/em> and how it was inspired by a subterranean adventure Kircher himself made into the bowl of Vesuvius. <\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Portrait<\/a>
Portrait of Kircher at age 53 from Mundus Subterraneus (1664).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

J<\/span>ust before Robert Hooke\u2019s rightly famous microscopic observations of everything from the \u201cEdges of Rasors\u201d to \u201cVine mites\u201d appeared in Micrographia<\/em> in 1665, the insatiably curious and incredibly prolific Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher published what is in many ways a more spectacular work. Mundus Subterraneus<\/em> (Underground World), a two-volume tome of atlas-like dimensions, was intended to lay out \u201cbefore the eyes of the curious reader all that is rare, exotic, and portentous contained in the fecund womb of Nature.\u201d There is an \u201cidea of the earthly sphere that exists in the divine mind,\u201d Kircher proclaimed, and in this book, one of more than thirty on almost as many subjects that he published during his lifetime, he tried to prove that he had grasped it.<\/p>\n

As a French writer put it some years later, \u201cit would take a whole journal to indicate everything remarkable in this work.\u201d There were extended treatments on the spontaneous generation of living animals from non-living matter, the unethical means by which alchemists pretended to change base metals into gold, and the apparent tricks of nature we now recognize as fossils. The book included detailed charts of \u201csecret\u201d oceanic motions, or currents, among the first ever published. The author\u2019s more or less correct explanation of how igneous rock is formed was also arguably the first in print. According to one modern scholar, Kircher \u201cunderstood erosion,\u201d and his entries \u201con the quality and use of sand\u201d and his \u201cinvestigations into the tending of fields\u201d had their practical use.<\/p>\n

Mundus Subterraneus<\/em> identified the location of the legendary lost island of Atlantis (something that modern science hasn\u2019t been able to accomplish) as well as the source of the Nile: it started in the \u201cMountains of the Moon,\u201d then ran northward through \u201cGuix,\u201d \u201cSorgola,\u201d and \u201cAlata\u201d and on into \u201cBagamidi\u201d before reaching Ethiopia and Egypt. Kircher offered a lengthy discussion of people who lived in caves (their societies and their economy). He reported on the remains of giants (also mainly cave dwellers) found in the ground. And he went into detail on the kinds of lower animals who belong to the lower world (including dragons).<\/p>\n

In short, Mundus Subterraneus<\/em> covered almost every subject that might relate to the realm of earth, as well as many that wouldn\u2019t seem to, such as the sun and \u201cits special properties, by which it flows into the earthly world\u201d and the \u201cnature of the lunar body and its effects.\u201d These correspondences and influences were nothing new, though perhaps only the always-inclusive Athanasius Kircher would choose to publish a series of moon maps in a book about the world below.<\/p>\n

\"Depiction<\/a>
Depiction of a Giant featured in Mundus Subterraneus.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

All these other subjects notwithstanding, it was Kircher\u2019s theory about the interior of the earth that captured, or at least deserved, the most attention. As he explained, \u201cthe whole Earth is not solid but everywhere gaping, and hollowed with empty rooms and spaces, and hidden burrows.\u201d Deep down, it holds many great oceans and fires, interconnected by a system of passageways that reached all the way to its core. In his view, volcanoes, however awful and awe-inspiring, \u201care nothing but the vent-holes, or breath-pipes of Nature,\u201d and earthquakes are merely the \u201cproper effects of subterrestrial cumbustions\u201d that are sure to go on constantly. The \u201cprodigious volcanoes and fire-vomiting mountains visible in the external surface of the earth do sufficiently demonstrate it to be full of invisible and underground fires,\u201d he wrote. \u201cFor wherever there is a volcano, there also is a conservatory or storehouse of fire under it\u2026. And these fires argue for deeper treasuries and storehouses of fire, in the very heart and inward bowels of the Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Kircher, \u201cthe fire and water sweetly conspire together in mutual service.\u201d The tides, caused by the nitrous effluvia of the moon, push \u201can immense bulk of water\u201d through \u201chidden and occult passages at the bottom of the Ocean\u201d and thrust it \u201cforcibly into the intimate bowels of the Earth.\u201d The resulting winds \u201cexcite and stir up\u201d and otherwise feed the subterraneous fire like a huge bellows. The seas, which would stagnate and freeze without the fires, keep the fires from getting out of hand, preventing \u201cunlimited eruptions,\u201d which would \u201csoon turn all to ruins.\u201d The \u201csecret make-up of the mountains\u201d is that they are hollow and serve as reservoirs. Hot baths, hot springs, and fountains are produced where underground water passageways come near or interconnect with the fire channels.<\/p>\n

\"Depiction<\/a>
Depiction of a Dragon featured in Mundus Subterraneus.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

More than once, Kircher compares the movement of the earth\u2019s water to the circulation of the blood in the body as described by William Harvey. The water of the oceans follows its \u201csecret motions\u201d up and around the globe toward the North Pole. Somewhere off the coast of Norway (the actual site of a major whirlpool system called the Moskenstraumen<\/em>), he declared, is a giant maelstrom through which the water enters the earth \u2014 as if passing through a great drain \u2014 and runs through it, cooling it down, providing it with nutriments in particulate form before being eliminated through a nether opening at the South Pole. Sometimes the analogies referred more to the continuing process of the digestive system than the cycling of blood, but no matter: \u201cYou see therefore the manner and way of the Circulation of Nature.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kircher didn\u2019t just (or didn\u2019t entirely) make up his ideas about the interior of the earth. He\u2019d first \u201clearned the great secrets of Nature,\u201d as he put it, almost thirty before, under circumstances of \u201cgreat danger.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kircher was about thirty five years old, and had been based at the flagship Jesuit college in Rome for about three of four years \u2014 attempting to decipher the hieroglyphics of the ancient Egyptians \u2014 when in 1637 he was assigned to accompany a young German prince on an extended visit to Malta. If he was initially upset about being dragged away with an immature prince to some rocks in the middle of the Mediterranean, his curiosity quickly kicked in. He made magnetic and astronomical readings, and studied geological formations. There were four-hundred-foot cliffs, natural arches, and a place where the tides had carved human-looking shapes into the earth. He explored Malta\u2019s megalithic temples, catacombs, and grottoes, and was especially fascinated by its inland seas and underground passageways: how far down did they go?<\/p>\n

\"8141858492_dfeb056e24_o\"<\/a>
Kircher\u2019s diagram showing the interconnectedness of fire inside the earth, featured in Mundus Subterraneus.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"8141829203_57a3b3dbda_o\"<\/a>
Kircher\u2019s diagram showing the interconnectedness of water inside the earth, featured in Mundus Subterraneus.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After about a year, Kircher was finally allowed to return to Rome, but he took his time getting there and lingered in Sicily for a long while. \u201cI found such a Theater of Nature, displaying herself in such a wonderful variety of things, as I had with so many desires wished for,\u201d he wrote later. \u201cWhatever thing occurs in the whole body of the Earth that is wonderful, rare, unusual, and worthy of admiration, I found contracted here.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was especially intent on exploring Sicily\u2019s outcroppings, cliffs, and volcanoes. And he wanted to look into stories about a type of fish that lived in the Straits of Messina, the body of water that flows between Sicily and Calabria on the Italian mainland. The fish was supposed to be susceptible to a certain kind of song \u201cby which,\u201d Kircher wrote, \u201cmariners are wont to allure it to follow their vessels.\u201d But those plans had to be put aside because of the earthquakes that devastated much of Calabria in the spring of 1638.<\/p>\n

Kircher recalled that the earthquake began as he and some others crossed the straits in a boat. The sea was \u201craging beyond what is usual\u201d and began \u201cstirring up huge whirlpools.\u201d The island volcano of Stromboli was \u201cthrowing up huge billows of smoke,\u201d and there was \u201ca certain subterranean lowing, if you will, which we were reckoning to be the cracking of the earth and which seemed to conspire with the odor of sulfur to insinuate the complete, fatal and funereal destruction of Calabria and Sicily.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite a \u201ccracking racket\u201d and a \u201cnoisome odor,\u201d and the fact that the \u201csea itself was boiling,\u201d Kircher and his party made it across to the mainland side. But soon enough came \u201ca subterranean racket and din, similar to chariots driven at top speed.\u201d The earth \u201cleapt up from below with so forceful a motion that I, no longer able to stand on my feet, was laid low, suddenly dashed down with face flat on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kircher experienced \u201cthe intolerable frenzy of the earth,\u201d and at one point even the feeling of his soul being \u201cloosened from its corporeal fetters,\u201d but survived to witness the resulting devastation. Through subsequent days of walking, his group \u201ccame upon nothing but cadavers of cities and the horrific ruins of castles,\u201d he remembered. \u201cConsidering the men straggling through open fields as if extinguished for their fear, you would have said that at that very moment the day of final judgment was looming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kircher\u2019s firsthand experience of this earthquake, which killed something like ten thousand people, might have put him off his investigations into the \u201cmiracles of subterraneous nature.\u201d But these horrible occurrences had also presented him with an opportunity for study. \u201cAfter having diligently searched out the incredible power of Nature working in subterraneous burrows and passages,\u201d he wrote, \u201cI had a great desire to know whether Vesuvius also had not some secret commerce and correspondence with Stromboli and Aetna.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was only one way, in his view, to find out. Vesuvius at that time was merely smoking. But its first major eruption in centuries had occurred seven years earlier, in 1631. Kircher hired \u201can honest country-man, for a true and skillful companion,\u201d and the two began hiking their way up to the forty-two-hundred-foot summit at midnight. (Perhaps the reason for leaving at that hour was to be able to see in the dark anything that might be molten. Or maybe the idea was to allow for a full day of exploration once they got there.) The way was \u201cdifficult, rough, uneven, and steep.\u201d<\/p>\n

When they finally reached the top, Kircher looked down into the crater. \u201cI thought I beheld the habitation of Hell,\u201d he wrote, \u201cwherein nothing seemed to be much wanting besides the horrid fantasms and apparitions of Devils.\u201d He heard \u201chorrible bellowings and roarings\u201d and there was \u201can unexpressible stink.\u201d The smoke and fire and stench \u201ccontinually belch\u2019d forth out of eleven several places, and made me in like manner belch, and as it were, vomit back again, at it.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the morning light came, Kircher recalled, \u201cI chose a safe and secure place to set my feet sure upon, which was a huge Rock, of a plain surface, to which there lay open an avenue, by a descent of the mountain very far.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. And so I went down unto it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The inside of the volcano was, \u201call up and down everywhere, cragged and broken.\u201d But there was no gradual decline; the volcano\u2019s chamber was \u201cmade hollow directly and straight.\u201d The bottom was \u201cboiling with an everlasting gushing forth, and streamings of smoke and flames, and employed in decocting Sulphur, Bitumen and the melting and burning of other kinds of Minerals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because the vapors and gases \u201cknow not how to be contained\u201d within the molten matter, they did so \u201cscatter the burden that lay upon them, with such great force and violence, accompanied with horrible cracklings and noises, that the mountain seemed to be tossed with an earthquake or trembling.\u201d Those spewings caused \u201cthe softer parts of the Mountain,\u201d made of, Kircher suggests, ashes, cinders, rains, and \u201cthe refuse of minerals,\u201d to be shaken to pieces and loosened; they fell \u201clike Hills, into the bottom of the Hellish gulph.\u201d And that made the kind of sound that even \u201cthe stoutest and most undaunted heart would scarce venture to suffer.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was within this hollow mountain that Kircher really began to develop the theories he set down so many years later in Mundus Subterraneus<\/em>, to envision what it might be like even deeper within the earth, and how the mountains and fires and rivers and oceans might somehow all be connected. Calculating the significance of that moment in the history of science is a lot harder than mentioning what appear to be two direct influences on culture: The creation of Bernini\u2019s Fountain of the Four Rivers<\/em> in Rome was certainly informed by Kircher\u2019s ideas about the interior structure of the earth as well as his ideas about the mystical nature of the universe (that\u2019s another story). And the spirited, bumbling polymath-dreamer of Jules Verne\u2019s A Journey to the Center of the Earth<\/em>, who leads a subterranean descent through an old volcanic crater, certainly seems to be based on Kircher himself.<\/p>\n

\n

John Glassie<\/a> is a former contributing editor to The New York Times Magazine<\/em>, and has written for The Believer<\/em>, The New York Times<\/em>, Salon<\/em>, and Wired<\/em>, among other publications. This essay was adapted from his biography of Athanasius Kircher, A Man of Misconceptions: The Life of an Eccentric in an Age of Change<\/a>\"\" <\/em>, which is being published by Riverhead Books on Nov. 8th. <\/span><\/p>\n

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