ABSTRACT
The extent of Kircher’s literary production is one of the most amazing facets of this outstanding Jesuit in his time. In the fifty years of his writing career, he wrote nearly thirty books (counting only first editions). Including subsequent reissues and reprints, there are, altogether, about forty-five printed works that appeared in his lifetime, not to mention translations into several languages and posthumous editions.1 Only two of these books had been published before Kircher arrived in Rome. Appointed as professor of mathematics at the Collegio Romano, his real mission in coming to Rome was to write a book on Egypt.2 The Coptic Forerunner (Prodromus Coptus), his first publication, appeared in Rome in 1636; his last, the Tower of Babel (Turris Babel), in 1679. While he lectured for only four academic years,3 his main activity until his death was writing, as well as building the collection of the world’s most famous museum and maintaining a worldwide network of correspondents on all scientific matters. The support he had from his Order in producing this stupendous number of books was a freedom to write, yet not to write whatever he pleased. Every single Jesuit written work had to pass through internal censorship before being reexamined by the Holy Office and finally printed.4
