The German Jesuit Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680) is generally regarded as one of the last homines universalis. In the seventeenth century, Kircher wrote around forty books on subjects as diverse as medicine, geology, astronomy, music, technology, mathematics, biology, religion, linguistics and countries such as Egypt and China. This was usually a combination of his own research supplemented with information obtained through correspondence with more than seven hundred scientists, but also through his own interpretations, fantasies and the adoption of ideas and texts from the work of others. This collection contains more than twenty books by Kircher, including his research into the plague, his encyclopedia on China, treatises on the Tower of Babel and Noah's Ark, the subterranean world with explanations for the origin of volcanoes, and his book on the stars. Almost all books are published in folio format and provided with a huge amount of engravings by more than thirty illustrators.
