10-01-2017, 07:04 PM
I do not read the reference to "the Sphinx" as being a reference to Kircher - rather, he is saying that only that master of Riddles would understand at once what Barschius meant.
Neal himself makes the note:
Kircher himself liked to be portrayed as Oedipus - probably cherry-picking just the bit about the Sphinx, not the whole incest thing - and indeed commissioned a magnificent engraving of himself as Roman Oedipus confronting the Sphinx for his Oedipus Aegyptiacus. An engraving that would help make him famous throughout Europe, and put him in direct confrontation with his Church.
Neal himself makes the note:
Quote:Until recently I could not make out the first word of that recommendation, but I now see that it is Sphi with a line over it; that is, the word Sphinx in abbreviated form. Marci is not short of space on the page and the abbreviation cannot be intended to deceive. It is surely intended as a minor jibe at Barschius and his Big Secrets. In the last but one paragraph we read sile with a line over it (there is another example in the third from last line of Marci's letter of 9 November 1643). This must be silenda or silentia, 'matters for silence', and could easily be a reference to censorship (you don't keep secrets by talking about them).
Kircher himself liked to be portrayed as Oedipus - probably cherry-picking just the bit about the Sphinx, not the whole incest thing - and indeed commissioned a magnificent engraving of himself as Roman Oedipus confronting the Sphinx for his Oedipus Aegyptiacus. An engraving that would help make him famous throughout Europe, and put him in direct confrontation with his Church.