Jesuits

The Baroque Monsters of Father Schott

1 Comment / Athanasius Kircher, Baroque, Eccentrics, Gaspar Schott, Jesuits, Marvels, Monsters, Oddities, Print Culture, Res Obscura, Seventeenth Century / By

In Portuguese, barroco means “imperfect pearl”: a fitting name for the Baroque era, a period that combined ornate beauty with a distinct taste for the odd, macabre and irregular. This interplay between the beautiful and the monstrous — and its connections to the rise of the “New Science” in the second half of the seventeenth …

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Early Chinese World Maps

5 Comments / Cartography, China, Intercultural Encounters, Jesuits, Res Obscura / By

 I recently came across this fascinating world map while researching the history of the Jesuit missions in seventeenth century China. Apparently developed by the Italian Jesuit Giulio Aleni while he was working as a missionary in 1620s China, the map strikes me as being remarkably advanced for its time.  Witness, for instance, the fact that …

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