Marci's letters to Kircher, revisited

[davidjackson]

Kircher was not at all interested in alchemy. He had something against that,

Kircher was a Jesuit priest. His books took him into conflict with the church fathers many times, and you'll remember he had several sticky confrontations with them. He had to ensure that his studies were clean and presentable, especially during his hard working 1640s before his reputation gained sufficient traction and backers to allow him to get away with (almost) ignoring his superiors.

Although interested in medicine, he never went in for alchemy, astrology (or even astronomy), all subjects looked up with askance by the church.