Read Online Man of Misconceptions : The Life of an Eccentric in an Age of Change (9781101597033) by John Glassie - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: John Glassie
Ads: Link
order to chart a portion of the electorâs territory (newly ârestoredâ to him through politics associated with the larger upheaval of the Thirty Years War), Kircher inventedâor rather, claimed to invent, as it was subsequently revealedâa cartographic instrument that integrated a magnetic compass with measurement and drafting tools. He called it the
pantometrum
, or pantometer, a name that suggested it âmeasured all things.â It was later described as a device for calculating âlength, breadth, heights, depths, areas, of both earthly and heavenly bodies, etc.â
Kircher finished the survey quickly, and the elector was âdelighted to such a marvelous degreeâ that he âcommanded that the other disputed states of the Archbishopric . . . be charted with like diligence.â But the elderly elector died about a year into Kircherâs service, and his successor, one Georg Friedrich von Greiffenklau, either was unimpressed with Kircher or didnât require his services, so he was assigned to what must have felt like square one, the Jesuit college at Mainz, site of his hernia-inducing skating accident, to resume the regular path to ordination.
â
DURING TWO YEARS of teaching in Mainz to complete what is known as the Jesuit regency period, Kircher did what he could to satisfy his now impossible curiosity and to make headway in his ongoing pursuit of the divine mind. He began to make his own nighttime observations with a telescope, or a âcelestial tube,â as he called it. And in order to observe the sun without staring directly at it, he used a device called a helioscope, an innovation of the Jesuit Christopher Scheiner that combined telescopic lenses with mirrors to project the image of the sun onto paper or a screen. Whether Kircher built his own isnât clear, but he claimed that on a certain day in April of 1625 he witnessed for himself what Scheiner and Galileo were arguing about, observingtwelve major and thirty-eight minor sunspots. It was ânot without wonderment,â he wrote later, that he saw âthe whole heterogeneous surface of the solar hemisphere, appearing composed out of shadows and little lights.â
When the Society decided to keep Kircher in Mainz for his three-year course in theology, probably because of the war, he made the most of it. âI was utterly occupied with this one endeavor,â he remembered, ânamely that I link to my theological studies the study of oriental languages, and that I pore equally over each at all times.â In his search for the earliest Christian scripture and the ancient, divinatory theology of Hermes, Orpheus, Maimonides, Zoroaster, and others, Kircher expanded his study of languages beyond Latin, Greek, and Hebrew to Arabic and two forms of what is now called Aramaic: âbiblical,â or Chaldean, written in Hebrew characters, and âChristianâ written in the Syriac alphabet.
But by 1629, after being kept about five years in Mainz, Kircher grew dispirited, as would any melancholic with ambitions of grandeur. (The city had been a site of frustration for inventive, ambitious sorts before; it was where Johannes Gutenberg first employed movable type, printing one hundred eighty copies of the forty-two-line Bible before being sued by his creditor and forced to stop.) Although the war had temporarily subsided, it had dragged on for a decade, politics across the Continent had grown more intricate, and almost all the nation-states of Europe had gotten involved in one way or another. Towns and villages throughout the so-called empire had been made vulnerable to the desperate brutality, not to mention the smallpox and typhus, of ill-fed armies.The plague had spread through that part of Europe as well; at its worst, in Prague, it wiped out sixteen thousand people. Harvests, years of them, had been ruined. Peasants had revolted by the thousands. The only piece of good news,
pantometrum
, or pantometer, a name that suggested it âmeasured all things.â It was later described as a device for calculating âlength, breadth, heights, depths, areas, of both earthly and heavenly bodies, etc.â
Kircher finished the survey quickly, and the elector was âdelighted to such a marvelous degreeâ that he âcommanded that the other disputed states of the Archbishopric . . . be charted with like diligence.â But the elderly elector died about a year into Kircherâs service, and his successor, one Georg Friedrich von Greiffenklau, either was unimpressed with Kircher or didnât require his services, so he was assigned to what must have felt like square one, the Jesuit college at Mainz, site of his hernia-inducing skating accident, to resume the regular path to ordination.
â
DURING TWO YEARS of teaching in Mainz to complete what is known as the Jesuit regency period, Kircher did what he could to satisfy his now impossible curiosity and to make headway in his ongoing pursuit of the divine mind. He began to make his own nighttime observations with a telescope, or a âcelestial tube,â as he called it. And in order to observe the sun without staring directly at it, he used a device called a helioscope, an innovation of the Jesuit Christopher Scheiner that combined telescopic lenses with mirrors to project the image of the sun onto paper or a screen. Whether Kircher built his own isnât clear, but he claimed that on a certain day in April of 1625 he witnessed for himself what Scheiner and Galileo were arguing about, observingtwelve major and thirty-eight minor sunspots. It was ânot without wonderment,â he wrote later, that he saw âthe whole heterogeneous surface of the solar hemisphere, appearing composed out of shadows and little lights.â
When the Society decided to keep Kircher in Mainz for his three-year course in theology, probably because of the war, he made the most of it. âI was utterly occupied with this one endeavor,â he remembered, ânamely that I link to my theological studies the study of oriental languages, and that I pore equally over each at all times.â In his search for the earliest Christian scripture and the ancient, divinatory theology of Hermes, Orpheus, Maimonides, Zoroaster, and others, Kircher expanded his study of languages beyond Latin, Greek, and Hebrew to Arabic and two forms of what is now called Aramaic: âbiblical,â or Chaldean, written in Hebrew characters, and âChristianâ written in the Syriac alphabet.
But by 1629, after being kept about five years in Mainz, Kircher grew dispirited, as would any melancholic with ambitions of grandeur. (The city had been a site of frustration for inventive, ambitious sorts before; it was where Johannes Gutenberg first employed movable type, printing one hundred eighty copies of the forty-two-line Bible before being sued by his creditor and forced to stop.) Although the war had temporarily subsided, it had dragged on for a decade, politics across the Continent had grown more intricate, and almost all the nation-states of Europe had gotten involved in one way or another. Towns and villages throughout the so-called empire had been made vulnerable to the desperate brutality, not to mention the smallpox and typhus, of ill-fed armies.The plague had spread through that part of Europe as well; at its worst, in Prague, it wiped out sixteen thousand people. Harvests, years of them, had been ruined. Peasants had revolted by the thousands. The only piece of good news,
Similar Books
