In the eyes of his contemporaries, Athanasius Kircher, S.J. (1602-1680) was one of the leading Catholic natural philosophers in Europe during the period between Galileo and Newton. With the coming of the Enlightenment, his star darkened-as did the repute of the bookish methods and arcane subjects that characterized his studies. In recent decades, however, the perspective has again transformed. Historians have made striking revaluation in the history of occult traditions, early modern Catholicism (in particular with respect to the Jesuits) and the post-Renaissance development of humanist scholarship. In addition, recent work in the history of science has dissolved the traditional, narrowly confined narrative of the scientific revolution and expanded the field of early modern science to encompass a wider body of ideas and practices. This dissertation project will investigate the significance of the study the cluster of intellectual traditions including natural magic, alchemy, astrology and kabbalah-known as the occult sciences in the middle of the seventeenth century, as reflected in Kircher's works and career. The researcher will use Kircher's work to demonstrate that the occult sciences presented early modern thinkers with a large and diverse collection of ideas from which it was possible to construct different interpretations, and that Catholic orthodoxy provided its adherents with more room for intellectual maneuvering than is commonly appreciated. By placing Kircher's views on occult topics in relation to the views of his intellectual opponents, the researcher seeks to delineate the range of meanings that adhered to different occult sciences and to identify the larger intellectual and religious issues at stake when early modern writers marked out positions on occult matters. By charting the changing reactions to Kircher's work by European scholars over the course of his long career, the researcher intends to address the much-vexed question of the demise of occult sciences as an important area of scientific inquiry at the end of the seventeenth-century. Support from this grant will allow the researcher to carry out primary source research in European archives and libraries for nine months during the academic year 2000--2001.
