ABSTRACT
Two years after Niccolò Cabeo’s work on the magnet appeared in print, a young and ambitious German Jesuit reached the city of Lyons. That he arrived there at all was, to his mind, something of a miracle, for to do so he had first to survive the perilous uncertainties of travel through the chaos and bloodshed of the Thirty Years War. Fleeing ahead of advancing Protestant armies, Athanasius Kircher reached Lyons somewhat the worse for wear, but he soon recovered and made his way to Avignon and then to Aix. He quickly established himself as an energetic and erudite naturalist with a penchant for spectacular displays and an uncanny knack for languages. Two years later, in 1633, he was summoned first to Vienna and then to Rome to serve as professor of mathematics in the Jesuit house of learning, the Collegio Romano. 1
