God’s Underlands: Athanasius Kircher’s Epic Journey in the Mundus Subterraneus

The famous Jesuit polymath, Athanasius Kircher, memorably stated that his remarkable two-volume scientific account of the underground, the Mundus subterraneus (1664) was born out of his fear of dying after crossing the Strait of Messina during the earthquake of 1638. Even assuming that this was true, this essay argues that a series of concurring elements enriched Kircher’s reflections on both the afterlife and what lies within the bowels of the earth. One of these factors was the growing contemporary interest in the material remains of early Christianity preserved in the Roman catacombs; a second was the mounting influence of Virgil’s Aeneid and its representation of the underworld within the humanistic and artistic circles of early modern Rome. By focusing on key passages from Kircher’s letter of dedication to Alexander VII, the importance of the rediscovery of the catacombs, the relevance of the verses from Virgil’s Aeneid that recount Aeneas’s encounter with his father Anchises in the nether regions, and the significance of Jan Brueghel the Elder and Jan Brueghel the Younger’s hellish landscapes, this essay paints a rich picture of Kircher’s roman environment, where reflections about the afterlife often accompanied an interest in the excavation and extraction of both relics and natural objects and a keen appreciation for vivid depictions of hell and purgatory. These elements point to the convergence of eschatological, scientific, and mythopoetic themes that help us identify Kircher’s work as a superb example of the unique synthesis of theology and natural philosophy, cosmology and eschatology that characterizes Baroque science.