Athanasius Kircher

Athanasius Kircher (b Geisa, nr Fulda, 2 May 1601; d Rome, 27 Nov 1680). German polyhistorian, theologian and music theorist, active mainly in Italy.

He is important for music as the author of Musurgia universalis, one of the most influential of all music treatises and specially notable among those of the Baroque period.
Kircher related the few known facts of his early life in an autobiography (see Seng’s translation of Langenmantel). His father, who received a doctor’s degree in philosophy and theology from Mainz University, was apparently also a musician, for Kircher credited him with his first instruction in music. After starting his education in his home town, he entered a Jesuit school at Fulda in 1612. On 2 October 1618 he became a novice at the Jesuit college at Paderborn, thus initiating a long period of intensive training in various Jesuit schools in both humanistic and scientific subjects. In 1622 he was forced to leave Paderborn because of the ravages of the Thirty Years War and went to Cologne to continue his studies in the physical sciences and philosophy. The following year he underwent further language training at Koblenz but was soon required to move to Heiligenstadt, near Göttingen, to teach Greek. Probably in the same year he was sent to the residence of the Archbishop of Mainz, Johann Schweikard von Kronberg at Aschaffenburg. In 1624 he began four years of theological study at Mainz, where in 1628 he was ordained. A final year of teacher training, which he pursued at Speyer, was required of him before he received his first appointment in 1629 as professor of mathematics, philosophy and oriental languages at the University of Würzburg. Two years later, when the Swedish army threatened Würzburg, he fled to France: he was sent first to Lyons and shortly afterwards to Avignon, where at a Jesuit college he took up a position similar to the one he had held at Würzburg. At Avignon he began an intensive study of the natural sciences and at this time became acquainted with Senator Nicolas Peiresc of Provence, whose similar enthusiasm for the sciences and especially for the study of ancient eastern civilizations led to a lasting friendship that soon influenced Kircher’s career.

In 1633 Kircher received an appointment as court mathematician to the Emperor Ferdinand II at Vienna. He decided to travel by way of Rome, which he reached on 14 November. However, through the influence of Peiresc, who urged both Cardinal Francesco Barberini and Pope Urban VIII to keep him in Rome, he found on his arrival that he had been appointed to the Collegio Romano as professor of mathematics, physics and eastern studies. He remained there for the rest of his life except for brief visits to other parts of Italy and a longer journey, in 1637–8, to Malta as the father confessor to Landgrave Friedrich of Hessea-Darmstadt. Eventually he was released from teaching so as to be able to devote himself entirely to research and writing. In his later years he often went for reasons of health to the chapel of S Maria della Mentorella at Guadagnolo, a village near Palestrina, and after his death his heart was interred there.