KIRCHER, Athanasius

Iter Extaticum Coeleste...hac secundâ editione Praelusionibus & Scholiis illustratum...a P. Gaspare Schotto...Accessit...Iter Exstaticum Terrestre, & Synopsis Mundi Subterranei

      Added engraved title, finely engraved arms on verso of printed title, & 12 engraved plates. 12 p.l. (incl. added title), 689, [18] pp. Thick 4to, cont. sheep-backed speckled boards (minor foxing), spine richly gilt. Wurzburg: Heirs of J.A. & W.J. Endter, 1660.pSecond edition, enlarged and edited by the author's friend and disciple Gaspar Schott, of Kircher's only work devoted entirely to astronomy; the first edition was published in 1656 with the title Itinerarium exstaticum. "Itinerarium exstaticum is one of Kircher's most curious works. He wrote the treatise in the form of a narrative in which a certain Theodidactus -- Kircher himself -- is caught up in a dream-vision or an ecstatic journey and is guided through the heavens by a spirit named Cosmiel...In the first dialogue, Kircher recounts the journey to the moon, which he finds scarred with mountains and craters, contrary to the Aristotelian view. He flies on to Venus, which he discovers is made of the four elements, and so on to each of the other planets and through the region of the fixed stars. The sun itself has blemishes, Kircher proclaims. He himself had seen sunspots through a telescope several years earlier... "Kircher rejected the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic cosmologies in favor of that of Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), who argued that the sun orbits the earth and is in turn orbited by the planets and the fixed stars. The Tychonian system was adopted by most of Kircher's fellow Jesuits, since it allowed them to maintain geocentric orthodoxy while espousing, at least in part, the new, more scientific heliocentricity advocated by the Copernicans. Kircher broaches this subject more directly in the second dialogue, where he deals with the creations of the earth, its position in the universe, its various characteristics and limitations, and finally, its eventual destruction. To support his views Kircher cites scriptural and scientific authorities in his conclusion. Among the latter are the astronomer Johannes Hevelius, the influential astronomer and meteorologist Gottfried Wendelin, Galileo, and other less-orthodox scientists of his day. This scientific, religious, and semi-mystical work testifies to Kircher's dubious poise at the juncture of two ages."-Merrill, Athanasius Kircher, pp. 26-27. Fine copy. Engraved armorial stamp of "Bibliotheca Raschkiana" on title. Merrill, Athanasius Kircher, 12.. First Edition. Hard cover.