Chapter nine
Letters from Fellow Jesuits
For almost 50 years Athanasius Kircher was in continual corre spondence with fellow members of the Society of Jesus. These letters, inevitably, range from the trivial to the important, from the tragic to the ridiculous. By their very diversity, they help to typify the spirit of cohesion and unity which so strongly characterised a society whose members were drawn from every social class, and whose common aim was to serve God. Jesuits of the seventeenth century must have felt keenly the pressure of Kircher’s presence in Rome. He seems to have been approached by all and, especially to the Jesuit missionaries, represented a homely, accessible figure at the heart of the Catholic Church. The proliferation of Kircher’s correspondence is largely due to his accessibility and to his constant readiness to reply with encouraging words and expressions of thanks. Of course, Kircher was not guided by sunny philanthropy alone: he culled many valuable snippets of information from the letters that snowballed into his study, and often reproduced relevant passages in his own works.1 For the main part, however, the letters remain an eloquent witness to Kircher’s essential humanity: the one lesson Kir cher never forgot was the simple truism, never stop learning. His Jesuit correspondents can be loosely grouped under the head ings of missionary Jesuits; Jesuits reporting on astronomy and natural sciences, and general Jesuit correspondence.
Missionary Jesuits
Jesuits have been called the storm-troops of the Pope. While the mili tant aspect of their activities may be exaggerated, there is little doubt that the aims of teaching and evangelisation which prevailed within the Society invariably imposed severe demands on those members
1 the varied scientific and literary help received by Kircher from his fellow Jesuits is acknowledged in Oedipus aegyptiacus vol. 1, pp. 396–398; Magnes sive de arte magne- tica, pp. 314ff.; China illustrata, Praef.; de Sepi, Romani Collegii, pp. 65–67. letters from fellow jesuits 217 who were chosen to work overseas. Kircher himself is said to have applied, in 1629, for permission to dedicate himself to missionary work in China,2 and there can be no doubt of his keen interest in and sympathy for fellow Jesuits who were fortunate enough to work abroad. Consequently his correspondence bristles with notes on all aspects of missionary work. A letter in 1672 from Adam Aigenler,3 who was to die some few months after reaching China and who had been pro fessor of Hebrew at Ingolstadt, contains an enquiry on how best to learn Chinese and on how to locate the works of Adam Schall,4 while a letter from Domingos Barbosa, in Brazil, describes the initial diffi culties experienced by the author after leaving Rome.5 An example of Kircher’s friendly forethought is that Borges had found, against expec tations, letters awaiting him from Kircher in his port of embarkation. Another Jesuit, Johannes Ciermans, this time on his way to China, wrote to offer his observations as an astronomer and geographer.6 His initiatory letter contains various references to the works on magnet ism of Cabeus and Gilbert, but unfortunately Ciermans was to die in Portugal on his way to the Far East. In a related field, Hermann Crombach wrote to Kircher with astronomical observations sent from a colleague in Malabar and offered to send Kircher his own Persicae linguae rudimenta.7 China was a popular field for mission work in the seventeenth cen tury, but so arduous was the journey there and existing conditions in ‘Sinis Tartarum Dominati’ that only the strongest could hope to survive. Albert d’Orville, one of Kircher’s correspondents, left Brussels in 1656 for China, arrived there in 1659 and died in April 1662 in Agra. Just before starting the journey he wrote to Kircher to ensure a plentiful supply of books and made arrangements for 24 copies of the Musurgia and twelve of the Oedipus to be delivered to one Joannes Jasmer, a Dutch bookseller. We learn that the Musurgia in Holland
2 in an article on Kircher by A. Müller in The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 8, p. 66. 3 epist. VI. 57 (Ingolstadt, 17 November 1671). 4 Kircher himself wrote to Adam Schall, mathematician and astronomer, to the Court of Peking; see IX. 292 (Rome, 16 April 1664). There is, however, no reply from Schall extant among Kircher’s correspondence; it is possible that Kircher’s letter reached Peking only after Schall’s death in 1666. 5 X. 185 (Bahia, 20 August 1661). 6 iii. 50 (Louvain, 7 March 1640). 7 XIII. 32 (Cologne, 3 October 1639).