Note 19 — Chapter VIII

Athanasius Kircher was born near Fulda, Germany, in 1602, and became a Jesuit novice at the age of sixteen. He was for several years a teacher in the Jesuit college at Wurtzburg, but was driven to France (1632) by the war then waging in Germany. Having spent some time at Avignon, he was sent to Rome, where he died on November 27, 1680. He was one of the most illustrious writers in the Jesuit order; see list of his works in Sommervogel’s Bibliothèque, iv, cols. 1046–1077. They embrace a wide range of subjects—science, mathematics, Egyptian hieroglyphics, archæology, etc. The allusion in the text is probably to Kircher’s China monumentis (Rome, 1667). ↑